I'm not going to try to recap all my rides since I last posted -- I'll never catch up on anything, at that rate! I'll try to be more on top of posting going forward, though.
My last two lessons on the horse were challenging; my canter two-point is practically nonexistent. I can hold myself up with my heels down IF I round my back. If I try to arch my back instead, I feel myself losing balance. My heels come up, my weight shifts too far forward, and I end up leaning on her neck for support. This isn't an issue at walk or trot. I also feel like, in canter two point, I'm having so much trouble holding my position that actually influencing the horse in any way feels next to impossible. Last night I was trying to ride circles over poles, and found myself only able to use my inside rein OR my outside rein, as I felt like I had to have a hand on her neck to support myself. Ugh. I think I ought to just be practicing my two point on the rail until it's in a better place, BEFORE I add complications -- like jumps, my favourite thing...
On the plus side, the regular seated work felt easy peasy after all that.
I rode on my own the other night, and didn't practice two point then -- just worked on adjusting my canter seat. If I sat up and back, kept my elbows at my sides, and let my weight drop into my stirrup at the right point in the stride, it felt great. Letting my heels drop absorbed a lot of impact, which let my body soften and follow the movement. I rode some half-decent flying changes, too, though not quite as nice as some of the ones I was doing over the winter on her, at the indoor. I am getting a bit better at making the right adjustments to ask for things in a balanced way. Though I seem to cut my corner every time coming across the diagonal. It's like I'm afraid she'll trip or something if I turn her too sharply so I'm lax when I shouldn't be. Need more practice, clearly.
I was also having issues with my right leg coming out an forward again, at the canter, like I used to when I first started riding again. Not sure what was up with that. Maybe still tired from the ride two nights before? I'll keep working at that. I've also been doing basically NOTHING to work on my fitness, other than my bits of riding (which haven't been as frequent as they should be, due to all this stupid rain) so I'm sure that's not helping anything. I went for a run this morning, which felt good but was NOT full of energy or stamina, that's for sure. Really need to get that working for me again. I've also started getting my studio cleaned up enough that I can, hopefully, be able to use the floor to roll out my yoga mat and do some stretches and core work.
I also made a difficult but, I think, wise choice regarding the pony I've been helping with. I essentially resigned, though I'm still going to keep at some of the training with her. She's proven to be a lot more anxious and unpredictable than expected. And even though she's come a long way with things like her separation anxiety, some of her spookiness, and he manners in things like leading and general handling, she still has unpredictable, explosive behaviour that makes my gut say that, no, I should not be riding her. The desensitizing work has been really interesting and I've very much enjoyed doing it -- what's not to love about torturing a bratty pony with a scary plastic bag on a stick? -- but, even after an hour of getting her to NOT react at ALL to a specific scary stimulus, she'll still pull weird random moves like spooking and pulling back because... the BARN??... was scary. She also bolted a couple of weeks ago and dumped her owner's kid in the dirt. It was seemingly unprovoked -- and happened WHILE she was being led! Argh! Too many traumatic memories of Java coming up to the surface. I don't want to ride a horse that's going to make me afraid to ride. The downside of this is that I will have to start paying for my riding again, but that's the fair choice anyhow, as the pony hasn't measured up to original expectations of being useful as a lesson horse, so there's no longer any benefit to my coach in me working with her. My coach agrees that she's not a safe horse to do much with right now, and that the right person for her is going to be one of those devil-may-care, will-ride-anything crazy teenagers who'll ride through the crap and maybe, eventually, turn her into a solid citizen -- or at the very least just put up with all the weirdness. If she were mine I might consider putting her, and keeping her, on a calming supplement, but she's not mine and I don't want to complicate things by paying for something like that with someone else's horse. So. I think I'll stick to groundwork and lunging, take her for some walks, hit her with some fly spray, etc., and who knows. Maybe she won't have a bad end, eventually, but she's a long way from being a safe lesson pony, that's for sure.
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