Spinning: Lesson Recap? 1/6

Shopping for mirrors for my new apartment.
More on that soon!

Today I had a make up lessons scheduled from last Tuesday. On Tuesday I had decided to reschedule, if possible, since it was extremely cold and was snowing. In addition because of our crazy cold weather and the New Year holiday I hadn't ridden for about 5 days prior so I figured that it would be more productive if I pushed it out a bit.

I rode this week Wednesday and Thursday and then had something scheduled yesterday so I wasn't able to make it to the barn. Both Wednesdays and Thursdays rides were "energetic" but Katai was listening, I felt like I rode well, and we got some things accomplished.

Today though we did not. This is the first day of a nice warm up and starting tomorrow through the end of the 10 day forecast most days will been the 30s which is almost a 50* swing from where we have been. I am THRILLED and was hoping that today, since they highs were actually in the low double digits, would feel warmer. When I got in the car to head to the barn though it was only -11.

Blurry but an accurately adorable representation of their current relationship

When I got to the barn Katai was quite fresh and spooky. She was really crabby for tacking up and then had a big spook as Jane and I walked her into the arena. She was really sassy when I climbed on and kept threatening to rear or buck but after a minute or so she calmed down and just went forward.

We spent a long time at the walk and were really focused on bending. She was doing well and walking nicely so we went to trot. I got all of 6 extremely crabby, humpy, tight, angry steps before I hopped off and called out that I was going to lunge. I almost NEVER feel the need to do that since normally I can more effectively work through it under saddle but I felt like Katai was going to bolt and I am not about trying to ride her through that.

Indeed, once we got the lunge on her and I got her out on the circle she lost it. I have never seen her run so fast. I did what I could to manage it and was glad that Jane was there to help with suggestions. Mainly though we just let her run it out and I just tried to slowly get some control back. There was a lot of running before I was able to get some semblance of her listening to my cues to change gaits.

We changed to the other side and had a minor repeat performance before we found the hamsters again. At that point I was able to cue for and get the gait I wanted and have her mostly maintain it. I swapped back to the starting side just to make sure I could get the same reaction and then we went back to riding.

Old media
More new pictures soon I promise! Right now my phone's been
dying if I take it out my pocket for pictures because of the extreme cold.

Jane mainly had me work in trot and we just focused on getting her loosened up and listening. After that performance the hump in her back was gone and while she was still stressy she was at least listening to me and allowing me to help her stretch and work over her back.

We ended on that note without ever touching the canter under saddle. Honestly it wasn't even frustrating really, just telling of how much energy she has since I haven't been able to ride. I completely accept responsibility for that excess energy and I'm just glad that I'm back to my routine of rides. Jane and I also talked a bit about her current diet. We've just added some more fats and a bit of grain to her ration since she was having a tough time maintaining her weight with the cold weather and increased workload. Jane is wondering if that has something to do with her mental state today and it certainly could. I also just don't think that she's getting enough (a couple of handfuls at each meal if that) to so drastically change her attitude. At this point we're going to assume it was the weather change and the lack of rides and go from there but are ready to make adjustments if needed if this doesn't improve.

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!

Spinning Like a Top

Our weather is finally turning nice!! It made it to the low 70s today and that was a great reason to get Katai outside for the first time since last fall. I have taken her out for a couple of walks and some time to hand graze but otherwise she hasn't been out since last year.

The goal for the next few weeks is to get Katai outside as much as I possibly can so that at least that part of the show at the end of May won't be too odd for her. I'm getting her out every day that the weather holds whether it's to ride or just to take her for a walk.

I felt like we had a 50-50 chance tonight whether she would be calm and normal or completely lose her mind. Spoiler alert...

It was the latter

During grooming she was really quiet and sleepy. I'm so happy to say that this no treats thing is working really well and she's quiet and pleasant and seems to enjoy my company. Katai was also really quiet and reasonable about walking to the arena which would have really made her hot in the past. I was still sort of thinking that there might be a chance that she would be calm and reasonable but when I got her in the arena on the lunge line she went right into a canter.

I could tell by her glazed over eyes that there was going to be no reasoning with her so I decided to just let her run it out. I tried to gently re-direct a few times but mostly just moved her around the arena and left her as far out on the line as I could so that she could make nice large circles. Eventually she calmed down and I was able to get her to make some walk/trot transitions. Finally I got her switched to go in the opposite direction and she got herself going again.

Eventually she wore herself out in that direction too and after a couple more walk/trot/walk/halt transitions I called it a day. She had run hard enough that she got herself slightly sweaty but nothing bad. I could tell that she didn't have much energy left but I have the feeling that she just needed this and that next time she'll be her normal calm self.

Honestly I was just really happy with how I handled it. I never got frustrated or tried to make something happen that just wasn't going to happen tonight. I was just calm and relaxed and let her do what she needed to and in the end that meant that her running didn't last as long as it likely would have and we had a nice calm walk back to the barn. I'm proud of myself for not getting wound up because even a few months ago that's what would have happened.

The plan for tomorrow is to ride inside but take her outside for a walk after. I'm fairly certain that Katai will be stiff, sore, and a little tired after her run today so I won't be too surprised if I get some fireworks. Hopefully though I can get some pictures!

My Crazy Weekend

My barn was having a schooling show this Saturday. I hadn't planned on entering but at the last minute J told me that there would be a sport horse In hand class and I REALLY wanted to show Katai. There were a few problems including that I have a white pony who is still pretty sure that the hose is going to eat her so a real bath would be tricky, I have no idea how to do sport horse in hand, plus I haven't ever made Katai trot next to me and even if I could get her to it certainly wouldn't show off her trot very well. I hate being unprepared so I decided to skip it this time but on Friday evening J asked if I would scribe and I jumped at the chance.

It really was great to scribe and get a feel for what the judge was looking for. This was my first time and I was a little nervous but the judge was very patient and helpful and I feel like its a good life skill. I was glad it was a schooling show and that no one showed over 1st level since those tests were already difficult enough.

It was great to spectate and help out, and I would certainly scribe again in a heartbeat, but hopefully I can ride in the next one!

Then on Saturday I ran my first 5K, not an event just on my own, with only one short 15 second walk in the middle! It was my first time running over two miles and I hadn't done that since last year. Tonight I ran another 5K and cut off 3 minutes :)

I'm really glad that I'm making some improvement because I'm entered in a Ragnar in August https://www.ragnarrelay.com. I'm excited but extremely nervous because this will be the first sporting event that I've ever been a part of. I never did any sports as a kid other than riding and even with riding I never had lessons or anyone to push me so I sort of putzed along and just had fun, which is great don't get me wrong but it doesn't encourage any type of fitness. I was certainly never an athletic kid and while my family did lots of hiking and we would sometimes go on long bike rides it was never easy or especially fun for me. I was never thin but going through college and grad school I was starting to get a bit tubby. It's not something that I've ever really brought up on this blog but it was seeing a picture of myself riding Myshla that made me decide I had to change something. 

I started running last year but never made it over two miles and only did that a few times. This winter I didn't run at all because I didn't have access to a treadmill so this year I had to start all over and I am so glad that I did! I'm actually starting to enjoy it and I can tell how much more fit I am just since I got back to it at the beginning of May. Since I started working on my diet and exercise about three years ago I've lost over 40 pounds and my goal is to lose about 15-20 more. Training for the Ragnar this summer will certainly help! 

Finally on Sunday my sister came to visit and came with me to the barn. I was able to convince her to take some pictures. She rocks! They are a little blurry but they are also almost the only pictures I have of me riding Katai so I don't even care.

Can you tell how much I love this pony :-)

Please forgive the wonky elbows and hands. Between the green baby pony things, the fact that J wants my hands a little low and wide right now to help her stretch down, and the fact that I haven't really ridden much at all for the last month since Katai got to the barn my position has certainly been better. Now that I finally have a saddle that fits and a pony that behaves I can start to do the work to bring it together.