This morning, because of too much puppiness, I didnt get outside with horses till it was starting to get hot. I got Pad the Man out, and admired his lovely feet for a little while.. groomed him... saddled him with his Stubben dressage saddle and stuck his pasofino bitless headgear on and headed down the road. Today is when this summers learning all came together for us. The feet are back where they need to be (long story) and over the course of this summers good rides, Ive identified which postures and attitudes help my horses move forward, and which influence them to suck back. There wasnt a lot of time before the excruciating midday heat set in, so I set forth for a short schooling and conditioning ride, which turned out to total about 1.7 miles. Paddy, because of the lateral work and ground work and my being more sensitive with my hands and seat, has become more fluid and flexible than he has ever been.. and when he loses fluidity, Im learning how to help him get it back. Despite being such a slow horse for several years (due to my ignorance and trust in a farrier who really didnt balance him well) he now needs little encouragement to move out.. and if Im relaxed and open, he needs none. But for me.. relaxed and open is difficult. I WILL get better, though! I was able to touch all the right places on my phone screen to get GeoTracker going, to track us. The path is pretty funny - a wad in my front yard where we were doing some small patterns and little exercises.. then a path a quarter mile down the road.. another wad in a vacant area with tall grass... then a fat, fat circle created by 9 or 10 passes around the inside of a cul de sac. Now this is the horse that was difficult to keep moving, and thus.. in gait. We did not work on speed today, just keeping cadence and staying in a flatwalk with a nice, fluid head nod. That, he gave me... What I did not know was that our speed, according to the graph on GeoTracker, was an amazingly even 4.7 MPH, except for the moments when we changed direction (that shows up as a little knot on our circle-path!) I also learned that 8.5 times around the cul desac is about a kilometer.. and that is the distance for which my good horse stayed in gait for me, today. Next ride.. I hope well be off to the trails.. but that will hinge on how early I can get the puppiness out of this puppy, so I can leave her conked out in her crate for a few hours!
Posted on: Mon, 04 Aug 2014 01:22:43 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015