A fortunate snow day, believe it or not

So, yeah, it snowed, and waaayyy more than expected. Forecast said we'd get 3"-6". Final totals were anywhere between 8" and 11" for the Eastern Shore. My Saturday lesson was cancelled, and the sub-freezing temperatures haven't let the snow melt at all. It's supposed to warm up tomorrow and Wednesday. We'll see.

Still, it's fortunate because guess what's happening down in Wellington???

I'm still on Anne Kursinski's ride, but her horse and the information she's giving is a little bit more relevant to my current riding state than the whole session was last year. First, the horse she's on is quite similar to Silver. He's an apparently laid back gray gelding that, every once in a while, loses focus and gets dramatic. He's even weaker to the right and occasionally swaps off behind, just like Silver. Big difference is that Anne's horse is significantly less dramatic than Silver. He swaps off, thinks for a minute, then gets his legs back under him. Silver swaps off, demands to know why I asked him to do that (I didn't, buddy, your physiology needs work), then threatens to drag me to Valhalla. I wish one of the auditors had asked more about the right side/right hind weakness so there'd be more discussion on it. Her main thing was to just not make a big deal out of it and just correct him.

She said "Dressage" so much. I liked that.

Some other nice takeaways:

• She reiterated the idea of position (i.e. equitation form) being more than just a pose you hold.
• She focused a lot on basics, which I think is a good way to start out the session.
• She tied the basics of flatwork back to jumping, a concept that took me way too long to understand and execute.
• She said funny things to her horse every time he spooked at something

Could be a levade, honestly

• She brought up the importance of work off the horse, including groundwork, body work (for humans and horses), and peering through the fence of a top rider's stable so you can watch them ride at 5am (best tip overall).
• Probably the most relevant point, she said that sometimes we blame ourselves too much, and that's where the body work comes into play. We can say that a horse acts a certain way because of our riding, but it might just be that the horse needs some chiro or massage or perhaps the rider needs chiro or massage (or weighted squats). There's no shame in that.

Now onto the children riding!