Another Meh Ride But This Time...

It was totally me.

Most of the time I've had the arena to myself for the past year. I can probably count the number of times that I've needed to share the arena on one hand. I've known that with multiple people moving in this is going to change and I'm going to need to adjust but I don't know if I realized just how tough that would be.

Then, today Jane came to lunge her mare while I was riding. I had, unfortunately, just set up a bunch of cavaletti at one end of the arena so Jane went to lunge at the other. I should have probably climbed off to move at least a few of them to give myself more room to maneuver but I didn't. That sort of locked me in to doing only very specific things.

I feel very safe with my tiny dog dinosaur keeping watch on my retiree neighbors

In addition I hadn't made it out to the barn the day before because the weather had given me a migraine and that same weather meant that the horses were in all day yesterday. Because of that Katai was speedy as well as sassy, she's very much in heat, and felt like a run away freight train.

Then, because the cavaletti got her even more jazzed up I spent most of the ride, limited to riding specific figures with a horse that was trying to run away and cavaletti everywhere in her vision which didn't help either.

Jane tried to help a bit from the other end and I was proud that I never ran out of patience but it was just really tough to be effective and I sort of set myself up to fail. Then, because she just.wouldn't.stop.running away I ended up working her more than I would have otherwise.

Shnoots

At the very least she was channeling most of the forward into a very big trot and not getting tooo tight or taking lots of little steps like she used to. She also didn't bolt, or buck, or have any tantrums. She just didn't end up learning much or changing her way of going at all during the ride and she's potentially sore after all that work which I really try to avoid.

Luckily I learned a lot and next time if I end up having a more limited space to ride I'll make sure I don't limit myself even more by adding a bunch of poles to the space.

Oh well, there's always tomorrow!

Goals Redo

Despite never getting the formatting corrected on my last post about goals (I think I would have had to start from scratch and I haven't been motivated enough to do that) I have been making progress with my goal to reformat my goals. Mainly I think it's more of a conceptual thing but with goals that's the real struggle right?

What I realized, at work of all places, is that I already have the tools to structure goals for myself. After all I participate in coaching conversations with many employees on a regular basis and help them set goals. I just needed to start using my experience and not freaking out about how to structure these in a more standard way that doesn't work for my brain.

So I've decided to break these down into "buckets" and update at the beginning of each month. Thinking of these as buckets (or topics or whatever makes sense) just works better for me. There's more flexibility built into the idea of a list of "buckets" than there is in a more specific list or plan. Since it works for my brain I'm going with it and since it's the beginning of June so I figured this was a good time to start. 

1. Proper bend to the left - We've got it about 90% of the time to the right, not it's time to get it to the left

2. Stretchy Trot - This is so necessary for her brain and teaching her not to just run when we're stretching will help with everything else, plus it's an upcoming movement :)

3. Canter Transitions - Practice, practice, practice

4. Lateral Work - All of the sideways. After a recent break through at the Susanne Winslade clinic we've actually got this sometimes and I can feel when we have it. Now we just need to practice and get more consistent

5. Cavaletti Exercise - I'm currently on the struggle bus with teaching Katai to transition within gaits (trot right now) and she likes to take shuffly little steps and then just walk when I ask her to slow within the trot. I think part of it is strength but part of it is that she just isn't quite sure what I'm asking for. I tried out an exercise where I put three cavaletti on each side of a 20 meter circle with one side being closer together (shorter steps) and the other were further apart (longer steps). 

I didn't do one after the other since that would certainly have just blown her pony mind but I would do one a few times, take a walk break and then do the other. It was really rough but eventually she really started to understand and we quite on a good note. This isn't something I'm planning to work on regularly but it will be a good way to mix up our other rides.