Long Day At the Barn

...But I got a lot done! I told myself I was going to wake up early so that I could go to the barn around ten... Didn't happen. This is spring break for goodness sakes, of course I slept in. Got to the barn close to noon after picking up lunch, and rode Auggie. I haven't ridden him in forever! He's a Canadian Warmblood who I occasionally exercise for his owner, who fox hunts him. Because his main job is fox hunting, I do ring work with him, and I am going to teach him how to bend and move correctly. He's stiff as a board, and bends accordingly. :/ Seriously though... I have my work cut out for me! 

Auggie... He looks good in green, no? :D

We started off just working on bending in the corners and such, which was really hard for him. Took a ton of leg, but eventually I think he got the hang of it. Then we moved on to trotting. Oh gosh. So, first of all, the saddle I rode him in is way too big for me. Seriously. I also had to wrap my stirrups. Oh - side note, stubben stirrup letters are freaking awesome. I have crappy circuit leathers that I hate with a passion... I think when they eventually die I'll get stubben leathers, because they are awesome. 

One of Auggie's big things is that he drifts into the inside around the corners. He drops his shoulder and just sort of falls in, or tries to cut the corners all together. I did the same thing that I did at the walk and really worked on pushing him over into my outside leg. I'm just letting him do whatever he wants with his head at the moment, I'm really just focusing on getting him to bend into the corners. 

The canter... Hah. Well, he was pretty good going to the left - picked up the right lead and everything, but we have a ton of work because he can't bend in the corners at all. I didn't even really bother with it today though. But, OMG. He has the stickiest right lead eveeeeeer. So hard to get. I think a lot of it has to do with balance issues. Anyways, that was an interesting battle. He picked up the wrong lead ten times before he finally got it. So I ended the ride there. 

I'm really pissed off because my lower leg has just turned into a piece of jello-y crap or something. I don't know what's wrong with me, but these past few rides, my lower leg has been swinging like crazy. It's just so annoying because I've always had this awesome lower leg and seat. I'm mainly just mad at myself that I haven't been riding so much lately and that's obviously the main reason why my position is like that right now. I need to stop beating myself up when I don't get something perfectly, because then I just feel worse about myself.

Next, I went to get my pony ready for our lesson! Because I'm on spring break, I decided to have two lessons with Sarah. I'm so happy I did, too! We started off in the barn of course, and worked on tacking up in the aisle again. He was so much better than yesterday! Baby steps eventually lead to big leaps, so yay. I can't wait until he will finally stand still to be tacked up! :3 We headed down to the ring and Sarah got on; she usually rides for half of our hour long lesson. It's really helpful to see someone else ride Gambler. That's one of the things I love about Sarah, is she sort of walks me through what she's doing while she rides, and then I can apply that to my riding. 

The main thing we worked on was bending around the corners. Like I mentioned yesterday, I've been doing a ton of circles with Gambler and he's finally starting to bend correctly! He was dropping his shoulder and not wanting to move his butt over though in two corners, specifically at the trot. So they worked on that, and then Sarah got some canters out of him. He did a total of two times around the ring both ways! I can't wait until he's back in shape. I think next week we'll ride in the field and start doing some hill work, if the weather is nice. Speaking of the weather - I am so totally over this wind.

Anyhow, after Sarah got some nice canters out of him, I rode Gambler. Oh, and by the way - he's doing so much better about the mounting block! Yay! Seriously, he's coming along so nicely...

Sarah walked me through the stuff she was doing to get Gambler to bend and we worked on his bad corners again. I didn't have time to canter though, but I'm planning on riding him again tomorrow. The amount of work I'm doing with him right now is perfect. Seriously, he's tired by the end and I can tell that he's already bulking up, but at the same time the ride isn't too long that he gets super bored by the end. I can't wait to ride him in the field because I think that will keep his mind nice and busy too!

After riding Gambler, I rode Lyric for about a half hour. She was a bit spooky what with this ridiculous wind, but was pretty good. We did the same stuff as yesterday basically, I added in some more serpentines and figure eights and such, and threw in a bunch of random halts and transitions. We also did some canter work, but nothing interesting really.

My mom was late to pick me up so I ended up helping out with feeding and talking with my BO. I'm kind of nervous because she wants to watch me ride Lyric, and I'm worried I haven't improved as much as she's expecting.

In other news - I work out with the PT tomorrow. As if that won't be enough exercise, I'm riding these three guys again and I'll probably help Heather move the huge pile of gravel that we have down by the barn right now. Needless to say, I'll be tired tomorrow night!