Better than the last two
I'm back on Baby (yay!), and I've discovered that her favorite treats are Ritz Crackers and sugar cubes. She's a carb vacuum, but she's cute, so she gets all the cubes and crackers she can eat. I had two rides last week, but they were both horrible, so no post, but today wasn't too bad, so I'm going ahead and typing.
She was somewhat antsy today, but not horrible. We were able to get out to the big arena for once in forever, and we have a brand new set up with 10 fences. I personally set up a beautiful wide oxer with the yellow boxes as a filler. It's a flawless fence, and it has a long approach, which I love. She was fine to walk and trot, and we set up a "box" of two diagonal lines in the center. We trot and cantered through those a bit and she was pretty good, but I was just ew. I'm trying to put my correct two point into action, but I'm still too tense to the fences. I just do what comes naturally (i.e. toes down, knee pinched, crotch to mid neck). Baby is getting better and better about her leads, but I can't always get her to do a correct change, and getting the lead over the fence does distract from the whole riding correctly part, so I'm just gonna keep it simple for now and just pick a few jumps every once in a while to ask for the leads.
The first course was horrible. It was the usual on the forehand, way to fast, ugly distances, flopping, etc. I came out feeling rather discouraged, so we did a second and a third course, and by the third one, Baby had slowed down with me asking her to, but I was still super tense in my hips and back. After the courses, I just did three jumps in a row for the heck of it, and she was great, so we ended there.
I'm still not happy with today, but I haven't posted in a while, and this ride felt good compared to the ones before it. Since my hands and still super heavy, I'm looking to get Baby a sidepull or other bitless bridle. Any suggestions are appreciated :) She's started sticking her tongue out, which genuinely bothers me, and Miss S has a sidepull in the barn, but it's ratty looking and probably should have been retired a while ago.
She was somewhat antsy today, but not horrible. We were able to get out to the big arena for once in forever, and we have a brand new set up with 10 fences. I personally set up a beautiful wide oxer with the yellow boxes as a filler. It's a flawless fence, and it has a long approach, which I love. She was fine to walk and trot, and we set up a "box" of two diagonal lines in the center. We trot and cantered through those a bit and she was pretty good, but I was just ew. I'm trying to put my correct two point into action, but I'm still too tense to the fences. I just do what comes naturally (i.e. toes down, knee pinched, crotch to mid neck). Baby is getting better and better about her leads, but I can't always get her to do a correct change, and getting the lead over the fence does distract from the whole riding correctly part, so I'm just gonna keep it simple for now and just pick a few jumps every once in a while to ask for the leads.
The first course was horrible. It was the usual on the forehand, way to fast, ugly distances, flopping, etc. I came out feeling rather discouraged, so we did a second and a third course, and by the third one, Baby had slowed down with me asking her to, but I was still super tense in my hips and back. After the courses, I just did three jumps in a row for the heck of it, and she was great, so we ended there.
I'm still not happy with today, but I haven't posted in a while, and this ride felt good compared to the ones before it. Since my hands and still super heavy, I'm looking to get Baby a sidepull or other bitless bridle. Any suggestions are appreciated :) She's started sticking her tongue out, which genuinely bothers me, and Miss S has a sidepull in the barn, but it's ratty looking and probably should have been retired a while ago.
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