After a full week off, I got back in the saddle again. Whew! I’ve put together some more realistic goals for this week for the horses.
Nigel and I rode the trails alone for ride 6 – a good step for him in building confidence and breaking away from the herd. Those are two important things to have sorted out before the season starts. Nigel has reached the point of “unflappable” when faced with the many things out here that might “flap” some horses.
Came back and worked on some cavaletti (walking/trotting over poles on the ground) with a long rein. He was a rock star, clearly had plenty of experience with that. Just a smidge of canter work as we work toward our goal for the Red Wine Challenge — carry a glass of red wine on a white horse while doing tempi changes. Nigel can do it, but I have some work of my own to rise to the challenge. Isn’t it cool though?
Pruning has started in the vineyards. Some owners take a “pre-pruner” — a machine that does a quick prune of the vineyards — and then have it manually finished. Some just have it all manually pruned. Usually they wait until the first week of February, but this is such a warm winter, everything is budding already. The ground squirrels are all over the place now, and usually we don’t see them until March.
The problem with a mild winter is that plants come out of dormancy, begin to bud, and there’s a good chance there will be a freeze in the spring, which will kill the buds and thus the entire year’s crop. We’ll see how it goes. Let me tell you, this is one girl who will NOT complain about a mild winter and warm spring!
Ride 7
More cavaletti and then worked on canter lead changes.
The canter is a “3 beat gait”. It begins with one hind foot (beat 1), then two feet strike at the same time — the other hind and the front that is on the diagonal to that hind (beat 2), and then the other front (beat 3). The “lead” refers to the last beat — if the right front is the last beat, it’s a “right lead”. If the left front is the last beat, it’s a “left lead”.
You’ll usually see lead changes in a direction change — so in a figure 8 the horse and rider will change leads where the circles of the figure 8 cross. That’s a real easy and basic way to get lead changes. The tempi changes in the video above are lead changes on a straight line and for just one stride — that’s why it looks like skipping.
This video shows leads really well at the beginning. (caution: horse-nerd alert!)
Anyhoo, so we worked on lead changes because MY timing in asking for a lead change is off. Yeah, a lot of horsemanship is about learning to ride the horse so that they are doing what already comes naturally to them, when you ask.
This is a big improvement from when I first started riding in that dang dressage saddle. My western saddle has a very good and correct tree and seat for having a good riding position. In that regard, the dressage saddle wasn’t so different. I just felt so exposed and vulnerable. Part of this may be age and part of it is probably because I started riding it right after recovering from knee surgery. Injuries have a way of making us hyper-aware of our vulnerabilities.
While today’s ride with the lead changes and whatnot was a bit discouraging, I just reminded myself of the fact that it wasn’t so long ago I was grabbing mane and praying everytime I asked for a canter.
That’s kind of why falling short of meeting goals doesn’t totally break my heart — we still can see progress even if we don’t see the success we’d hoped. It’s a matter of time, as long as we don’t quit.
Meanwhile, my chess game is improving and yesterday I won TWICE! Look out, guys…
Stats:
Nigel’s Rides: 7 down out of 30. Hours: 8.5 out of 40. Progress toward the Red Wine Challenge — if I tried it now I’d spill so much wine it’d look like a crime scene.
