Post-Christmas rides

So I've had a pretty good weekend. Lots of riding, of course!

Friday I rode Champ back out to the shack and took some more pictures. He was remarkably good-natured about the whole thing. I fussed with my leg position for a long time then got frustrated and rode home without stirrups. Stupid things are definitely hung too far forward. I'm still trying to decide what to do, in the long term, about that.

Saturday I went to Frayser and rode with James. I got to ride Rascal, James' incredibly fast racking horse, and James rode Surprise, who is still a psycho. A bucking psycho at that. Anyway, I took a bunch of pictures of the trails because I swear to god yall wouldn't believe them otherwise.

This is pretty blurry, but it's representative.


More mud and ruts!


Here's the train bridge. The space under the bridge is just high enough that riding underneath on a tall horse, you can reach up and brush the bridge with your fingertips.


It feels very postapocalyptic back there. Junk, trees, four wheelers, and horses. It's not much of a stretch to imagine zombies too.

There's quite a few long smooth straightaways too. Gas pipeline access roads and open fields. It's a nice mix of places where you can really stretch a horse out in his fast gait versus horrible soupy slippy mudholes where the horse has to pick his way along. A good ride with good company.

Cersei came with us, of course. We rode for nearly two hours, and she had a blast. James and I laughed, thinking about her first few trail rides as a puppy. We'd all start out together, me and James on our horses with puppy-Cersei gamely following. After a quarter mile or so, she'd be worn out so she'd run in front of us, sit down, and start barking. James would get off, grab her, and pass her up to me. I'd stick her in a messenger bag and off we'd go again. After a mile or so she'd squirm and holler so I'd let her down. She'd run like hell for another quarter mile before we started the whole thing over again. I guess it was annoying, but they're not puppies for very long. :)


Sunday I had another frustrating lesson. Things are still slowly coming together, I think. When I read Daun's year in review post, I got all depressed. Seven dressage lessons at the start of '08? Aaaarrrgh why do I suck so ba- wait. She's been riding correctly, with instruction, for like 5x longer than I've been bouncing around in blissful ignorance. I'm probably doing fine.

After the lesson, I went and tried Dixie with double reins. JME had suggested it, in the comments on her post about bitless bridles, and it worked quite well. I had the curb for when she got panicked about the strange feel of the snaffle rein, and the snaffle rein actually did encourage her to bend her body instead of scrambling through a turn only using her feet.

I only rode her for about 30 minutes. Dixie needs to build up stamina, but I think it's important to not fall into a pattern of working her hard every time I ride. Whenever I'm out there, she follows me around like a very large and very nervous puppy. I don't want to squash her interest in me.

More catchup!

So Sunday I rode all day. It was sunny and gorgeous and fairly cold, like I mentioned before, so I wore a couple extra shirts and my gloves.

My dressage lesson was frustrating, again. I cannot get that damn pony to trot for love or money. When she did condescend to trot (cause Hardy trotted by on his horse), however, we did something really cool. We jumped!

She chose to trot for me once, and we trotted the cavalletti. We came back to a walk, and Hardy and I talked for a bit, then we convinced Princess Val to trot again, and Hardy sent me over this completely tiny jump - like a low X jump set on its lowest side, really intended to be a trot exercise. I was all "Nooooo way!" and he was like "trot it!" so we trotted up to it... and Val gave a tiny little hop from the trot.

I did not fall off, and I did not yank on her mouth, and I did not even get really off balance. Pretty cool!

At the end of the hour, we swapped horses and Hardy, of course, barely had to squeeze to get her to trot. He thinks that my legs are still a bit too far forward. I am somewhat skeptical and suspect the horse loves to torment me, but I will go next week in a good attitude and try getting my legs a bit further back. I sulk on here, but I do try to listen, learn, etc. during lessons. ;)

After that, I drove up to my old barn and went riding with James. He was riding some big rangy horse he swore was gaited - not his, one he was reriding for the barn owner - and I got to ride SSB. SSB is James' very own young pyscho TWH/SSH. We went on a fairly long ride, over two hours. The trails there are just as bad as I remembered, nothing but deep ruts and slushy mud and roaring 4 wheelers.

SSB is a fun little ride. She's as bad as Dixie used to be about not standing for a rider to mount; you've really got to scramble on board and go racking away fumbling for the off stirrup. She has pretty good steering. When James got her, she was incredibly pacey - he's gotten her to where she does a tolerable and fast stepping pace. If yall are interested, I could go into a lot of detail about gaits, but I feel like I ramble way too much anyway.

SSB didn't have brakes at first, til she got used to the way I ask for a halt. I have a minor talent for teaching walking horses to woah - nobody EVER gives them ANY release, because you "gotta" hang on their mouths at all time. If I can get the first pause, I release really fast and they get absolute loose rein unless they start to move their feet again. It works, it really does.

We had a fantastic if chilly ride til we turned for home. The two long fields on the way back were absolutely brutal with the wind whipping by - my (uninsulated) thighs were numb and my (uncovered) face was burning from the wind. Ugh. When we got back, the flappy loose end of my girth strap was frozen stiff with icemud. Double ugh!

At one point, SSB slipped in the mud and went down on her knees and I was sure that we were both about to get a frozen mud facial. But astonishingly, I never went off balance and she scrambled right back up. And even more astonishingly, I wasn't terrified that I was going to end up dragged or trampled or launched into a tree. The lessons are paying off in so many ways!


I can't decide whether to feel guilty or not. SSB is pretty young and we rode HARD. If she was my horse, I wouldn't ride her that hard. But the thing is, she's not my horse and she gets ridden that hard all the time. I rode her balanced and with kind hands. I didn't push her to GO GO GO, she's just a young psycho who chooses to GO GO GO nonstop for miles. And if I hadn't ridden her, she wouldn't have gotten the day off - just ridden with hard hands instead. Sooo... not my horse, not my rules.

Belated weekend update

I felt kinda guilty posting this last night, because it was just such a lovely day yesterday. The northeast is buried in ice, Hawaii is buried in mud, and it was 60 here.

But today it's hovered near freezing and we could possibly have up to an inch of ice overnight. Aaaaand as a direct result, our schools all let out at noon today. (Please remember to breathe in between bouts of hysterical laughter, Northeasters.)

Anyway. Yesterday.

I had another frustrating ride on Valentine. Progress is slow with me getting all my parts coordinated, but I am getting there.

I did decide to entirely stop looking at my reins, even when Hardy mentioned them - I realized that whenever he'd say, for instance, "outside rein!" I'd look down. I don't need to see it wiggling to know it's loose. I really need to feel it wiggling, or better yet feel the lack of contact and do something about it on my own.

I also had this happen a few times:
Decide to trot.
Squeeze for trot.
Nothing happens so squeeze again and suddenly, Val throws her head up and inside and pins her ears.

Hardy said I was yanking, and I protested mightily that I was not in fact yanking, and then I realized that perhaps I was tensing up when Val ignored my first cue. Hrmm.

She's fun, but she's really frustrating. You must give the cues perfectly or she either ignores you or pins her ears and gets angry.


After that lesson - which didn't feel like a stellar advancement of my skills, but I know I'm just on one of those plateaus and one day soon it'll come together again - I went trail riding.

With James!

Yay for James!

K and T were out there - T wanted to go with us, and K just wanted to take a nap but she was quite eager for one of us to ride Poppy. I really wanted to ride Dixie, so I stuck fearless James on Poppy, K rode her bastard Goblin, and we headed out.

Dixie and I led the way, and she was completely relaxed and fearless and swingy. Such a great horse. Poppy was a bit stumbly, but he was very well mannered for James. And T was really alert with Goblin, so he didn't try to bite/kick any other horses, yay.

It was a short ride, just over an hour, but that's a very long ride for T. And a fairly long ride for Poppy! He's not out of shape, but he's not muscled up like he could be (I'm looking at Klein here!) After we got back, we made K ride Poppy. Poppy was an angel for her, cause he was a) a little tired and b) in the habit of listening to his rider. Then we stuck T on Poppy and he did well for her too. Then I let James ride Dixie, and she gaited beautifully for him.

Next weekend I'm gonna go up to the old barn and go riding with James again. Now those are some technical trails! I will get pix for those (i.e. all) of you who have not slogged through a full year of my blathering, so you can see what I think a "hard" trail is. Anyway, we're going to try to alternate visiting each other. My new trails are beautiful; his are longer and tougher.

Today we purchased Guitar Hero World Tour. I took a break from ROCKING to post this, and I'm off to ROCK again!