No More Riding Till December

Last lesson (almost two weeks ago now), I got to ride Gretsky again, and canter! We had some issues keeping going, and I have some issues keeping a good seat when the trot got faster. But I did get to canter, and it was lots of fun.

The bad news was, Anna is probably moving stables. She's retiring two of her horses (Ikarus and Smokie), giving one a month's vacation (Wild Thing), and splitting up the other two for the month (Gretsky and Domino).

She should be contacting me in December, when I will be able to start up again, possibly at a new location, which will hopefully not be too much further away.

Lesson 18

The dogs need to be leashed now. Poor Pia... at least she found a good place to dig.

Today I got to ride Gretsky again. But no canter. The morning was actually quite cool, I was even wearing a little jacket to start!

Today we were working on half halts. I started with trotting a serpentine through the arena, and when I passed through the chairs, I was supposed to slow to a walk, then trot on again. Once I got that, we went to halting between the chairs, and then trotting on. Unfortunately, Gretsky decided my telling him to stop actually meant he should just walk really, really, really slowly (I think he thought he might get carrots if he got to Anna, she was not of the same opinion). So it took quite a while to convince the horse that stop did in fact mean STOP! Once I could actually get the halt, we moved on to asking him to stop, and when he started to, asking him to go again (which is a half halt?). By the time we were done with that, Anna's next lesson was arriving.

I don't know if you can make out what's going on in these pictures, but this is what I saw when leaving. That's Domino and (I think) Ikarus. They're both holding onto a rubber ball, and they were walking around in circles. It was just a very odd sight.

Lessons 16 and 17

I'll start with last week. I got to ride Domino, and I got to canter! Domino's canter, much like his trot, is big and springy. The movement of canter is easier to sit though, so as long as I kept my back loose, and moved with him, it was really fun.

Was still having steering issues though. Apparently, when I want to go right, I should be pulling the left rein more. If that makes no sense to you, join the club. If you understand, please share. It seems very counter intuitive to me.

This week I got to ride Gretsky again. After Domino, Gretsky's trot seems very small and stunted. He's also much harder to keep moving. But still a fun ride.

See his neck there? That's not what it's supposed to look like, and that's what we were working on the whole lesson (canter on Gretsky comes next week). The picture below is a little blurry, but that's closer to how he should be looking.

Next week I should get to canter on Gretsky, and work on getting him give me his head... This week every time he looked like he does above, it was instantly followed by him tossing his nose in the air. Oh well, I'll get there.

Lesson 11

Gretsky again today. Lots of work on trying to get an energetic walk and trot. I gotta get more comfortable using the dressage whip. Gretsky pays far more attention to my legs if he thinks I'll back them up with the whip. I just have some kind of mental block, where using the whip is like admitting I wasn't good enough. I did finally manage to get a good working trot though.

Today was nice and cool and cloudy, but the flies were horrible. Every time poor Gretsky shook his head, a cloud of flies exploded and then quickly decended back to his face. When we stopped for a water break for me, he took the chance to try scrape the flies off against his leg.

Lets play a game of "Find the Jack Russel Terrier." Pia is in this picture, but don't look on the ground.

No lesson next week. Anna will be out of town again. But the week after, we're going to go on a trail ride!

Tenth Lesson

Lots of pictures from this week, I'm not going to post them all here, so see them here instead.

I got to ride Gretsky today. The woman who normally rides him showed up when I was just finishing off, and Anna told her she could ride Domino instead. Today was mostly about getting used to riding a horse other than Kaibab (who was picked up at 1:30 am Monday morning... or does that still count as Sunday night?). Gretsky is very curious about what is going on around him. It's a little hard to keep his attention, as he'll see a couple walking their dog down in the river bed, or Pia in a tree, or someone taking pictures, or a bird, and forget to listen to the person on his back.

Apparently I'm quite lucky, as Gretsky only just got used to Pia climbing trees. Although I guess it was her coming out of the tree that really concerned him (it's raining dogs!). He was wary of dogs and trees, especially in close proximity to each other, for weeks after Pia's first tree climbing adventure. I believe the tree climbing pictured above occurred before Pia got to finish off Anna's coffee (that's right, the dog climbs trees, drinks coffee, and even climbs into buckets to sit in the water when she's hot).

The box from last week was still there, though this week we didn't try to do anything other than walk and trot through it.

Speaking of trot, Gretsky's is a dream compared to Kai. He's actually so smooth at a trot, I was noticing I had to work to keep posting. With Kai, your butt hits the saddle, and he's so bouncy, you're half way up again before you realize it. With Gretsky, I think I could have comfortably sat his trot the whole time. Almost no bounce at all.

No lesson next week, as Anna will be gone. Guess I'll have to find something else to do at 6:30 am on a day off... maybe even *gasp* sleep. :)

Lesson 4

No pictures from today's lesson. I let my boyfriend sleep in. :)

Today I rode Gretsky again. I got to practice going from halt, to walk, to trot, and back down a whole bunch. The trot was mostly sitting trot, and though my blister from last week had healed, I now have two more. I really gotta work on not holding onto that strap quite so hard.

I didn't really get enough sleep last night, and was fighting back a headache. Next week I'm going to bed at 8. I spent all week looking forward to my lesson, I'm not going to feel under the weather for it again.

Lesson # 3!

I got to ride a different horse today, but no smaller than Kaibab (if anything Gretsky was slightly larger).

Gretsky was quite sure that SOMETHING around there was edible... my shirt maybe?

I got to do lots of stretching and moving around today (while moving). Touching my toes, reaching forward to touch the horse' ears, and stretching up... or maybe I was surrendering.

Gretsky has a much easier trot to sit than Kaibab, and we did a lot of sitting trot this week, which went really well. I do still need to work on keeping the stirrups where they are supposed to be though.

And then I got to trot while circling one arm back. Hopefully the blister on the ring finger of my left hand will be gone for next week. In my defense, the blister is probably because I managed to get some fiberglass in the palm of my left hand getting my cat off the roof on Thursday... so I was doing strange things to avoid having anything touch my palm.

And finally I got to feed Gretsky some carrots. FINALLY, something EDIBLE! He inhaled those things!