Good Ladybug

Edit: I wrote this before I was in the accident but I wanted to thank all of you for your comments. It means a lot :) I was extremely sore yesterday and actually went to the hospital. They told me I had whiplash and gave me some pain meds and told me to take it easy for a few days. I dodged not being able to ride but we had a snow storm yesterday and today so I won't be going to the barn. Tomorrow the high is -9* so we'll see if I go out then. Luckily next week is still forecast to be in the 20s and 30s so I'll be there every day!

First, to explain the title I always used to call female horses Lady. Not as in the name but the way you might say "Hey ladies!" to your friends. With Katai, since she's my adorable little bug it turned into Ladybug :)

The adorable little bug herself

Second, I just want to say that Katai is a good girl. The reason that I don't talk about her spooking, bucking, leaping, bolting, kicking, biting, etc is that she just doesn't. Especially after working with Jane, she just doesn't do anything other than get a bit tense, rush a bit, trot sideways a bit, or possibly giraffe for a stride or two and that's more confusion or when she's feeling a little stiff than an actual "no" response.

You can just feel the pre-ride excitement 

As an adult amateur who personally doesn't have the guts to deal with a big powerful horse that  doesn't always want to play this is absolutely perfect for me. It's the most amazing feeling to go to the barn and know that one way or another we're going to have a productive ride. Of course sometimes I feel better about rides than others and I'm consistently on the struggle bus with figuring out all of these new skills that Jane is patiently trying to teach. However, Katai has been right along for the ride which makes the struggle bus a much less lonely place.

P is for Pony and also Perfect and Princess ;)

She's still a horse and sometimes she still decides to blow me off. Sometimes when it's chilly out and you're a pony and your feet have grown wings and you're stretchy trotting so your rider has less half halting ability it's a lot more fun to go fast than to listen. I wasn't asking for much, just that she slightly slow down based on my escalated seat cues but slowing my posting wasn't working, using my seat wasn't working, picking up my reins wasn't working so I went to pulling on my reins and to be frank, it took a pretty big pull to make a difference. I HATE pulling on her mouth but a "trotting" away pony needs to listen at some point and I'd given her almost too long (more than half of the arena) to make a change.

We're riding at 3* like a badass

After I corrected her we walked for a bit, did a transition to trot (which was beautiful :-) and then I asked her for stretchy trot again. Going down the long side again her feet grew little wings and we were nearly cantering. I started with my posting, then my seat, and finally barely picked up the reins and this time she immediately slowed her trot. What I was really happy about was that there was no over reacting and she stayed stretched down into contact. I ended on that because we were already at the end of a great ride but it's being added to our homework for the next few weeks.

The Ugly: Lesson Recap 4/24

Today was one of those lessons that felt ugly but accomplished a lot. Katai had been in all day and with our sort of weird week she wasn't feeling dressage time in the sandbox today. Also, after the Janet Foy clinic and a couple of clinic videos I watched I was doing more to correct her when she was misbehaving.

Pretending to be eventers with an awesome duct tape patch job

I had learned to do no, to almost no correction, when she was having meltdowns because once she started melting down she wouldn't stop for the rest of the ride. The problem is that now she's not doing that any more and when I'm not correcting her when she's doing something wrong, like bulging her ribs into my leg and not listening at all to my leg cues, I'm just allowing her to get away with something and not really teaching her anything. Today I started correcting her and then going back to how I was riding before and guess what, no meltdown!

Katai got rinsed off since she actually got a little sweaty. It was cold so she got to wear her baker while she was cooling off

She would react of course but that's what she's supposed to do. Then she would go back to her normal self except she would be listening better! Woohoo!!! I have a horse that is rideable. There was still a lot of ugly because then she would be a bit more spicy and I certainly got more head tossing than normal but we also had some amazing moments with a pony that was in front of my leg but listening to me. The fact that I started off with a very resistant and sassy pony who only wanted to canter and ended up with a compliant pony that was really listening and in front of my leg but not melting down is basically a miracle.

We were working mainly on movements from training level tests. We did a lot of using the whole arena and free walk diagonals as well as free walk zig zags. The closest we came to a meld down was when we were working on changing the bend through a trot diagonal and Katai didn't want to listen to my leg. I've got some homework here to make sure that I'm always riding her between my leg aids and demanding that she listen the first time that I ask and neither making me nag or even throwing herself into my aids (which is her favorite). Mainly though my goal is to do this without making her melt down so I'll be working on being firm but continuing to be tactful.

Should be easy enough...