Hello hello! Well, tomorrow is Turkey Day, probably my favorite holiday (St. Patricks Day and Halloween are close seconds). This is because I love food. Its totally yummy, but it also unfortunately makes me chunky in ways that do not look good in breeches. This is something I've struggled with, as I'm sure the majority of people have. I've got to get back on the wagon, if I'm going to accomplish my riding goals, I have got to be more physically fit.
But that's not what I want to blog about today, thats just sadness. No I wanna talk about happyness and frustration. With riding they sometimes go hand in hand. Since the horse show Bastian has been wonderful, we've put in some very nice flat work and his canter has gotten sooooooo much better. He is engaging his hind end better and is just overall feeling good. So this equals happyness.
So I had the bright idea of tyring to learn how to properly do flying changes and teaching Bastian. So I had a lesson this morning and needless to say we did not accomplish our goal. Which while I did not expect to master flying changes, I guess I did have hopes of getting half of a change or getting pretty damn close. Instead I got a super rushed canter and some great counter canter.
Bastian's got a pretty nice counter canter, we've been working on it for a while now and he can do very balanced serpintines without even trying to change, in a year from now, if we've finally mastered some other 2nd level stuff, the counter canter movements should be cake. So anywho, Kristin had me doing a lot of stuff. I mean a lot. This whole flying lead change is probably the most complicated thing I have ever learned how to do. My pony did them automatically, she was awesome, but she also got crazy while doing them because we were mostly doing them while polebending. So I kinda know how to ask, but I don't know how to do it properly (like dressage scoring 7 properly, I might be able to pull off a 1 or a 2 on a horse that already knew how to do them...lol). Anyway, Bastian was just kinda saying WTF to me. Not in a mean way, just in a you don't know what your asking me to do, I don't understand it so I'm just going to counter canter and go faster because you are kicking me and touching me with the whip and kicking and whip mean MOVE!
Kristin hopped on him at the end and was able to get a change in each direction out of him and we ended on that. It was very frustrating. I knew it would be tough going in, but I also very much believed that by the end I would have made measurable forward progress on my journey to learn flying changes. Instead I made progress in the context of taking lots of steps backwards and understanding how complicated this process is really going to be. Which is good, I've been thinking about it all night and trying to break it down into steps that will allow me to figure this out, I wouldn't be surprised if in my dreams tonight I try to get B to do a change (provided I don't have a nightmare about our Turkey busting out of the oven and trying to kill me...)
But this frustration is kinda new. I have good rides and bad rides, but I have always finished better than I started or progressed. This time I didn't. I finished off worse than I started because now Bastian is rushing in the canter, and we can't even get a half change for all that. I'm anxious to get back out to the barn and ride, I want to figure this out. I'm trying to plot when I could sneak out of the house before dinner tomorrow (no way could I ride after dinner!) but don't see it happening. Black Friday involves work and then the Black Friday Sale at Big Dees, Saturday involves more work. So right now its looking like I won't make it back to the barn until Sunday. :(
Maybe a few days off will give Bastian the time he needs to figure out just what the heck it is I'm asking him and give me the time to mentally handle all the new info and instructions I got. I've got a few exercises that we need to work on and I've got to learn how to count again (which if you watch my lessons where counting something is involved (canter strides, strides btw jumps, etc) you see immediately why I did not become a Math Teacher.
I am thankful for my horses and that I have horses in my life. They are wonderful and have made me a stronger, better person. So thank you ponies!
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