Goals Part 4: The Unexpected & Unprecedented

I got home from break and literally did not even wait to step foot in the barn. I went to bed on Tuesday, woke up on Wednesday and went straight to my lesson. The goal for this winter break is to ride twice a week. I'm going to be home for at least a month, and Miss El already kicked my butt in the first lesson, so it'll be a productive break.

I had actually asked her a couple weeks ago about riding during break since I knew I was going to be trying horses. I told her I wanted to ride twice a week, and she said I could absolutely ride Roman if that was the case. Now, let's rewind for a minute. First, who the heck is Roman? Roman is Miss El's personal horse who she's had as long as I've known her. When I first met Roman, he was a very curious, inquisitive, personable, distracted 3 year old. He's still all of those except now he's 6.

Whither is basically head height
One of my goals for 2016 was to finally ride him because why not. I planned that as one of the things to accomplish over the summer, and when it didn't happen, I just shrugged it off. At the time I asked Miss El about riding over the winter, I asked if she had a horse I could ride expecting her to say that I'd need to find something, but she offered up Roman. I was shook.


Anyways, as the vlog showed, I finally had my first ride on him. Score! What's hilarious is that his personality under saddle is completely different from on the ground. You can't stand next to the horse without him sniffing you or resting his head on yours or grabbing your coat zipper (the last of which he does with shocking consistency and accuracy). Then you sit on him. And he's like "nah". Distracted, sure, but also slow and generally disinterested in any sort of work what so ever. Apparently, he's like that to jump, too. Someone should explain to him that he's too fancy to be this difficult to ride.

Remind me to adjust my filming ratio
Most of the ride was spent trying to figure out how to stay stable in the Dressage saddle again. I also put the girth on backwards. Overall, Dressage is still dumb and impossible, but I am trying.

The day didn't end there, though. In our recent conversations, Miss El mentioned that one of her students was getting a project horse and wanted to lease out her current horse, one that's been in training with my trainer for I think two years or so. I said sure. I had nothing to lose with trying another horse. By some stroke of damn good fortune, his owner was there on Wednesday and let me ride him and said that I could take lessons on him over break. Welcome to the blog, Silver.

Sassy lil Half Arab
He's currently going at training level and jumps 2'6" easy (and honestly). As I was warming up, Miss El was lungeing another horse. We were fine walk and trot, but his issues are with the canter, so trainer played double duty and was yelling things at me. Low-key, it was a free lesson. After she went to put that horse away, I went to jump Silver, and he was the best little nugget. Took every spot I asked for and got two kind of lead changes (like three strides late behind, lmao). Miss El came back out to teach Silver's owner on her new horse. I geekishly offered to let her see me jump, cause, ya know, my trainer totally hasn't ever seen me jump before. She gave me her usual smirk, so I went for the roll top, and we cruised over it. It was surprisingly successful considering I've never jumped at her place before.

Not a bad way to start the break, if I do say so myself. Sorry for the novel of a post. I just really enjoyed myself.

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