I was tired. I had a long day, got out of work late, getting home seemed to take longer than normal. I got in the door, and muttered a host of excuses for only lunging all the way to bareback hacking, and general equestrian goofing off.
I gathered my riding pants, changed, found Ransom, got him saddled, and got to business. He warmed up free lunge really pretty - taking himself on quite the crazy gallop, ears up, stretching out. He was super happy to be out, moving free, and off that pesky lunge line. It was fun to watch.
I know I'm not going to make any new progress, or reach any show goals if I don't get my bum up there, and darnit he's too fancy & too good to stand in the pasture & be a trail ornament. So I hopped on. I put my practice gloves on, but realized they've reached their final wash of usefulness - they're stiff, uncomfortable, and feel waaay too thick to feel reins in my fingers. So I stripped those off, and got back to it.
Ransom was stiff & a little fussy, but it was to be expected - He really didn't want to collect, since he's had some time off for arena work & his little leg booboo. I got some nice collected work out of him, but it was short-lived, before he started leaning on his front end and trying to pull me down with him. Down the long sides he would extend, but not rush. THAT was a cool feeling.
I got about 45 minutes total on him, then kept my other commitment - Romeo.
Romeo and I ran, for about 45 minutes. Some of that was nice jog work, some of it collected walk, some a little easy canter, but he sure wanted to run. Mo realized how much bigger his new arena is, and wanted to show me that, given a little nudge of my legs and body posture forward, he can still run fast. What impressed me more, was after each set of canter/gallop craziness, it would only take two to three minutes for him to catch his breath and pick his head up ears forward. I was happy he's getting back in shape.
I'm looking forward to more rides this weekend. Jen and I are coordinating schedules for a little time "airplane arms" on the lunge line. I'm also looking forward to setting some cavaletti back up in the arena, and remind myself I am not a terrible rider, and it's got to look bad before it'll look better, way before it'll look awesome.
1 comment:
Don't you hate it when people won't stay out of your business? I mean SERIOUSLY, friends can ask me what the heck I'm doing this weekend.....but people who aren't friends, BACK AWAY.
Do you ever just feel like that???
Post a Comment