Monday, October 4, 2010

10/2/10 Ransom and Concentrating

I gathered Ransom up, his twisted wire bit, and my helmet. The weather, well, more of the same awesome goodness. I took advantage. Yes, two days in a row, which in the heat I'd been on every other day, but gosh dernit. I wanted to enjoy the sunshine! :)

So bareback we went, and I hopped on with no warmup. Immediately, he bounded forward in this incredible free walk. Happy head, happy floppy ears, and we were going somewhere on a mission! I could almost hear Ransom whistling.

I concentrated a bit. What was my body doing? What were my legs doing (nothing, flapping around).. What were my hands doing (actively following his head, but relaxed).. What were my shoulders and back doing (not much, again, swinging along with him).

So the key to the free walk, is relax. I asked him to collect up a little, and the walk shortened. I felt his back collect, and hollow, collect, and hollow. I added leg, and started paying closer attention. It took a combination of a lot of seat, a lot of leg, and a little hand to get a good forward collected walk.

To ensure I still had the balance, and because Ransom was tired of just walking, I added in some good sitting trot, and a little canter. Sitting up tall, the canter was amazing. Sitting trot? Short. Understandable, since I was occasionally losing my balance in his big trot, and he would shorten his stride, and come to me, almost "catching me."

A sweet twenty five minutes of blissful uselessness. I mentally got a few things on record, but that was as motivated as I got. *grin* Weather weather weather.. thank you for making riding relaxing.

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