Saturday, July 16, 2011

Riding again

It has been a busy week. Sharon & I were at Beaver Island for 2 days, got home on Wednesday night. Then I had to get caught up on things on Thursday and Friday. Friday I had a lesson at Cheerios with 11 yr old Elly. She did real good on Buddy. I got a chance to drive a mini in a mini surrey. I want one of each. But today, I got a chance to ride, even if it was for only an hour. I had to try out Mike's repairs on my saddle. Thank You Mike. It all went well. Raven and I know a lot so I have been just trying to refine and better what we have. But I want to learn a sliding stop so I watched a video about it and went to work. I have to have a good stop and back up at the walk with just my seat, if possible. So I worked on that quite a bit today. I did it at the walk. I still want to do it more. She has to be real collected and round and then I sit deep in the saddle, take my legs off her sides and exhale. She stops n backs up. When I have this real good then I move to the trot. We still have to go to that level. I got bored and needed to check my back woods so we went for a trail ride. Flies were real bad though. We got back after about 1/2 an hour and then practiced kneeling a few times. Then I finished her and put her up. It was a good ride. It gets no better except to do more exercises with precision and lightness. I also want to learn the flying lead change.
So I have some things to work on.
I could use another horse to train too. If anyone knows of one.

Friday, July 8, 2011

horses

the last two days I had the opportunity to mess around with my horses. I rode Raven yesterday and had her doing real well. I am working on her kneeling so I can get on her from there. Not that she is tall or anything, but it is kinda fun. I worked on that today too. I also wanted to work on her leg yielding toward me and she is getting real good at that. Then when I got on her I wanted to just refine the things she already knows and get them better. It is alot fun to ride her when she is so responsive to my feel.
Jake is getting like that too. I rode him today for just a bit. I worked mostly on ground school stuff, refining those things he knows. I also started to work on leg yield toward me. He is gonna take some work.
I had a lesson with Buddy at cheerios today too. So I really had some good time with horses today. gotta go the honey is home.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Raven

I had a chance to ride Raven today. I have a different saddle, cause mine is in the shop for repairs. :{ Anyway, I got her saddled, a dream as always. She is just so soft with it all. I went through my exercises with her on the ground. I do the usual, disengaging, moving shoulders, back up and lunging. I also have her leg yielding toward me and away from me. She does real good at this because I have worked so much with her. I got on her and moved her around a bit in the pen, doing leg yields, side passes and haunches in kinda stuff. She is a dream to ride for me. Then we went for a ride down the road. I had a great time cantering her for about a mile. It was a real rocking chair soft, rythmic kind of canter. It is fun when she is balanced in a collected state. Then we just trotted and walked the rest of the 3 miles we went. I worked on keeping my upper body relaxed and soft as I was using my seat bones to move with her movements. I practiced speeding her up and slowing her down with my seat. She does better at speeding up than slowing down, especially if we are heading in the direction of home. It was just a real good ride. I got her back, unsaddled her, brushed her and then she went and rolled in the dirt. Ah, yeah! Thank you Lord for letting me have the time to ride.