I am so lucky to be with someone who knows how passionate i am about horses, a man that is willing to be on the back burner right now while i work 2 jobs ride and be a mother because he knows that i am trying to provide the best that i can given the circumstances. My second job is going great i will have all my bills caught up even the Vet bills for this month by the end of next month which makes me really happy. It is a step in the right direction thats for sure.
Back on track, i have changed my riding days to Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights since the remainder of the week i work job #2 at night. I cant go in the evening because that is time with my son i am just not willing to lose. So i sneak away to the barn when he is fast asleep, im lucky in the summer because that means catching my horse with some daylight left to easily find him.
Finding him easily is nice but right now our entire lower half of the pasture by the gate is 6 inches of much that you have to navigate through and my princess of a horse HATES having to walk through it so he will either stop or try to find a better way than the one i am taking.
I was covered in mud when i got back in from the feild, i didnt want to put muddy pants inside my riding boots, luckly i worse some cowboy boots out to the barn. I lunged G quickly with all his tack on something i do not usually do, he had a few bucks to throw in just to point out how much he hates being lunged with his tack. I also tried using a saddle pad as well as a fleece half pad because G doesnt have a lot of muscle built up on his top line i find my saddle does not sit flat on his back when i am not in it so i figured adding some extra padding would help while riding make sure that the saddle doesnt bounce on the back of his back while in a trot. Hard to tell if it helped or not but i did get a nice relaxed trot out of him. When i have a bit more money saved up or my current saddle becomes a problem i will have a saddle fitter out to check the fit to make sure we can prevent as many future injuries as possible.
We started our ride out at the walk doing circles at every letter in the arena in both directions he is much more flexible to the left than he is to the right. When it was time to change direction we would trot accross the diagonal and i would have to fight G somewhat to keep him from cutting the line i was asking for short and returning to the rail quicker than i wanted him too. We picked up the trot and had some great forward trot around the arena counter clockwise until he heard something that made him have a bit of a meltdown in the scary corner of the arena so i ended up cutting the arena short and only working on the trot on the one end.
To get his attention back on me we worked on half halts, i would ask for a quicker walk with my legs then ask for a slower walk with me seat it felt amazing to see how quickly he responds to the cues. Halting on the other hand is not our strong suit, i will as for the halt and he will stop for a second then start trying to walk off, i would try to put him back where i had asked him to halt and that would result in him tossing his head and swishing his tail. I know persistance will beat this so once i got a decent enough halt to call it progress we moved on from that.
I used my left rein to gently pull his nose towards my boot on the left side.. no problem he even had a second to nibble on my boot thats how easy it was. I tried to repeat to the right and it resulted in him backing and more tail swishing he wouldnt give me any bend at all to the right, that is something im not so sure how to fix i guess working a little more to the right and practice will get some results.
Anyways this post has rambled on for long enough, at least i added a picture at the begining this time, I wont be able to get out to ride tonight since i have an orientation with work. But our ride last night was only 30 minutes and i feel like i have accomplished a lot we did more work at a trot than i have ever done with him and we are only going to go up from here... Im going to look at some dressage tests today and see how possible it is we get to go to a show this summer <3 fingers crossed!
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