On Thursday morning the saddle fitter was coming out at 9:00am. My husband had to get to work, so we took separate cars to the barn. We both cleaned stalls and he left for work.
Then I tacked up Dijon and did a quick ride up to the barn owner’s house and then back and forth along the driveway. There’s a nice flat stretch that we can actually pace/gait along so we did a lot of that. He has a ton of energy and was really convinced he should get to gallop. I did manage to convince him to gait a bit, but we had a bunch of breaks to pace as he got too excited.
It was nice to ride him though. After getting some energy out, I took him back down to the lower arena to wait for the saddle fitter and we practiced side-step. I wanted to practice half-pass, but he was being a bit of a jerk about it. I can get him to do half-pass beautifully when we’re out on the trail and he wants to go back to the barn and I won’t let him. But he thinks arena riding is stupid and acts like a fool when I ask for the same thing in the ring. So we went down to baby side-steps and I rewarded him for taking even a little step to the side.
The real issue is that I am not and never have been and probably never will be a good dressage rider, so I’m sure a part of the resistance is me not asking correctly. However, I was having issues with it one time and asked the trainer who was walking by doing something else if she could watch me for a minute and tell me what I was doing wrong. She watched me ask for half-pass. Then she said, go the other direction, towards the gate. I did and he magically suddenly became fully capable to doing it. And from both directions so long as we were heading towards the gate. So I may not be an awesome rider, but he’s also partially responsible for not getting it done.
I was alone at the barn so the only pics I have were taken by me while on him. How do other bloggers do pictures of themselves riding? Do I need a special app or device or what?
I'm starting to think that part of being a popular blogger is having good friends who are talented photographers! All of my photographs are either between the ears shots or cross-tie shots, too.
I know. I wish I had more pictures of me riding. I'll take like 200 pictures of my husband in a ride (I just hold down the shutter to try to catch a good movement) and he'll take like 6 of me.
My husband takes the pictures of me riding. I've also set up the camera or phone and let it record video, then take snapshots off of the video. 🙂
Isn't the arena sour behavior so annoying?? Chrome does that when I ride in the pasture and it's so irritating. I can't blame him for preferring to be on the trail because that's where I prefer to be too, but sheesh I wish he would stop doing that.
I have my fingers crossed he can make the saddle work for now. I rode in a 16" saddles once and was in sooooo much pain afterwards. Ill fitting saddles are a pain… literally.
With Dijon I just accept that he's a trail horse and not an arena horse. He's never been an arena horse for me and I bought him with 0 plans to do arena work, so I don't hold it against him. I'd have different expectations if he was my only horse.
Yes true, it does make a difference if you have more than one. 🙂
He's very lucky that I'm fortunate enough to be able to keep 2.