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.

If the Broom Fits

Well, I didn't end up dressing up for my Halloween lesson but if I had I would have totally dressed Katai as a witch...

This year

Goals for next year

She was just as bad, if not worse, for this ride with Jane as she has been for the rest of the week. I was SO GLAD that I had Jane there to help me and make sure that it wasn't just me. I knew that some of it was me but I also needed to know what to change and how since I had run out of tools.

Jane was able to be really helpful but even she commented on how horrible Katai was being. Honestly if I didn't know better I'd say that she'd run out of Magnesium because she's acting more like she used to when she wasn't getting that. I suppose it wouldn't be unheard of for something to be off with her supplements but I trust Smartpak so I really doubt it. Both Jane and I are thinking that it's the change in the weather combined with a bunch of new horses in the barn and a new routine.

I'm really hoping that it is just that and that she decides to return to normal sooner rather than later. I won't even go into much about tonight since it wasn't as though we really made any progress beyond ending with a slightly looser pony than we started with. Very telling was that she was really sweaty around her ears and on her neck despite the cold and the fact that she really didn't work that hard or for that long. I really think it was just where she was mentally tonight.

She's looking cute since she got a spa day yesterday but that's about all I have that's positive about where we are with our riding and dressage progress at this point haha. Along with the spa day I had a challenging (but better) ride yesterday only because I literally didn't ask for anything and just bombed around while my new fellow boarders rode around with us.

Just as I hoped it was great to have them there and is still motivating me to go to the barn despite current pony/human relations being so challenging :)

Also, more puppy pictures for your daily dose of cute!!

I can't believe that she'll be 5 weeks old this week! Only about a month left before she comes home :)

Snowmageddon

Not the snow falling outside, which is happening, but this particular 13.2 hands of snowy white fluff.

Don't let her cute looks fool you

She was a PILL yesterday for my ride. I had really low expectations for that ride and just wanted to do about 15-20 minutes of stretchy, bendy, walk and trot work and just a simple canter each direction of the arena. Basically the only reason I was going to ride was to stretch her out and help her feel better after the hard work of the lesson on Tuesday.

Unfortunately all Katai had planned was to do the exact opposite of what I wanted. I asked for a trot and got a canter, asked for a leg yield (again with the trying to help her work out the stiffness) and got a lengthening, I asked for a canter and got a halt and so on and so forth.

Supremely frustrating but I'm proud of how I rode it which was to just keep trying to find a mutual solution to the disagreement and yet I wasn't coddling her.

I think the main reason for the fussiness was that she's using different muscles and likely a little sore. Combine that with a pony that likes to get the right answer but now is being asked to change what the right answer is and she was both physically and mentally locked up and crabby.

Therefore our ride turned from a 15 minute easy prance to a nearly 60 minute tough, mental, sweaty workout. However, we did get somewhere. Recently especially I've really been a diplomat. I know we're changing things so if I can get even 75% of what I'm asking I'm going with it, probably to the detriment of our riding goals, but it has helped to mitigate our riding related meltdowns. Yesterday was no different except I wasn't even getting 25% and through pushing to get at least that much I ended up getting closer to 100% by the end on certain things.

I did end up letting a lot of things go, she was still VERY tense but was letting me at least bend her and help her try to loosen up. I also had to let go of the stride length because about the only thing she seemed capable of was tiny itty bitty strides. Instead I made those strides fall at the tempo I wanted even if it meant that it took us forever to make our way around the ring. The real victory was that she actually was letting me put my leg on and was accepting it in both directions and was moving away from it equally in both directions. She also was taking contact on the right rein which was what initially started the meltdown (although I started out asking for about 25-50% of what I needed and at the end after all that fuss I ended up with closer to 100% of what I need).

I was good for the ride and after I was still pleased with how I'd handled but also emotional at how far back this step is. I dealt with this pony (or a slightly worse version to be honest) for over 2 years and she's been SOOO good recently that it's painful to be back here. We're still along for the ride and I know this is just a blip but it's a really painful blip right now.

In other snowy news, the weather man was actually pretty accurate.

I took the picture above a couple of hours ago and a lot more has fallen since then. It's still 33* and the ground is still warm enough that it's melting on the roads and just wet for driving but it's really sticking around more than I expected on the grass.

Also, here's a picture of my new little snowball!!!!!!!!!!

Already practicing the side eye

I'm dying over here wanting to just snuggle her so bad.

                          

Alas, I have just over a month to wait. It sounds like the breeder is aiming for the last week in November/First week in December and is working with the airline right now to arrange travel.

As to the details, she is a long haired Chihuahua. One part of my decision is that I really have wanted a dog I can bring to the barn and, while Veggie is the perfect dog in every other respect, he's just too keyed up by visual stimuli to be safe there. However, because I love his personally so much (he's an Italian greyhound/chi cross) I've really been wanting a Chi. Add to that the fact that a LOT of my horse friends have Chihuahuas all of whom are really nice little barn dogs and I decided to go with it.

I looked around for a long time for a breeder I liked that was producing happy, well adjusted dogs (especially important for toy dog breeders in my opinion) and finally found this one. I got first pick of litter, however, one thing I was inflexible on was that I wanted a girl and, wouldn't you know, this litter only had one girl. However, she is exactly what I wanted so all those positive thoughts I sent to her mom must have worked :)

Now I just have to somehow make it through the next 4-5 weeks and I'll get to finally welcome her home!!