Mondays and Tuesdays

Hand walks for the mare bear to cool down plus I get in more steps this way!

Officially Monday is off but I thought I’d mention why and then move on to Tuesday.

 A few years ago when I was taking lessons on a Sunday it made sense to give Katai off the day after the lesson since that was definitely when she was working the hardest. I started to really love that routine because, let’s be honest, Mondays suck. Even if you love your job if you typically have the weekends off it sucks to lose your freedom and go to work on a Monday.

Not that going to the barn is a bad or negative thing but knowing that I can just go home and lay on the couch after my work day on Monday is really motivating.

 On to Tuesdays!

 The plan for Tuesdays is that I do a “PT” ride. PT for Physical Therapy and this comes from Jane’s perspective of dressage rides being all about helping the horse address any discomfort in their body first and foremost. Right now these consist of doing a bunch of walk and feeling for anything that feels stiff or uncomfortable in Katai. Then I make a plan to fix it.

This past Tuesday, for example, she was falling in when going to the right and really struggling to get off the right leg while sort of struggling to bend through the ribcage going to the left. From that I diagnosed that she felt tight through the right side of her body and sore or weak especially on her right hind. I did a bunch of lateral work, especially spirals in and out and some 10 meter circles in each direction. After spiraling in and out at the trot she felt loads looser and we had some really nice trot work. She’s feeling flat and sort of scrambly because she’s weak right now but she was striding out and looser in her body which was awesome.

Overall the ride was about 25 minutes and much of that was at the walk. We didn’t even get to the canter but that’s ok. Because she’s been feeling weak and tight she’s been really resistant to canter recently. I’d rather build her strength at the canter on the lunge and build my strength out of the saddle before I address it under saddle. Plus hopefully that will avoid any arguments.

 More on what we’re doing with our lunge work next!

Rhythm: Lesson Recap 11/21

I had a great walk at the Frontenac state park with my family  on Thanksgiving :)

I still have so much catch up that I'm going to try to do. Again, sorry for the lack of blogs recently but life has been crazy. Especially since the end of October things have been looking up (other than my back) which is so nice.

Katai has been back to her normal self except that she feels like she's lost some strength which sort of sucks. I'm not sure if she's just that sensitive that any muscle soreness sets us back, or if this is normal, or if it's just that my expectations are growing faster than her strength is increasing. At any rate, Jane isn't at all concerned and again I'm so glad that I have an instructor that I really trust and who's been through all of this in the past.

At any rate, on Tuesday for my lesson we started out with a very stiff pony. Not only had I not been riding as much since my back was hurt but she was also horribly in heat with the additions of two geldings in the barn. Because of that we started off doing a bunch of walk and at the walk we did some turns on the forehand and lateral work. Then once we went to the trot it was all about the lateral work. We did some nose-to-the-wall leg yields as well as some from the center line to the wall. We also worked on shoulder in.

More puppy pictures!!! She's 8 weeks as of today :)

For the shoulder in we focused on helping me get the timing right to really get her inside leg under. That was partially helping to continue to educate me as a rider and partially setting us up for the canter later.

With all of the lateral work she really loosened up and started to move like her normal self but she never really worked into the HUGE trot that we've been getting recently. Finally we worked on the canter. Our goal was to really get her to step under with her right leg because she's definitely weaker on that leg. To set us up for that we worked on either doing shoulder in or counter bending her to activate that leg and then asking for the transition. Jane also had me ask her to come back to trot as soon as she lost the rhythm which was really tough for me to find. It's funny because I can get the rhythm at the trot but I have a tough time keeping her at the same rhythm sometimes and at the canter I just can't feel it.

Homework is for me to practice feeling/hearing the rhythm of the footfalls and to bring her back as soon as she looses the rhythm. I'm really looking forward to working on this! I feel like it's the next step and I feel like I really know now what I need to work on.