♣Ambitious♣

In writing the post about my last lesson, I realized that I wasn't going to be able to talk about the actual lesson in addition to my current frustrations because the post would have been an even longer novel than it turned out to be. So, here we are. Definitely going to milk these photos for a while lol As I said before, the warmup started very nice with minimal arguments. He was fiery but manageable. Frankly, my type of horse. It felt good to have him come off my leg and be alert but still willing to trust my aids and channel that energy into a high quality trot with good self carriage. Whenever a horse is like this, I tend to soften my corners and turn the short sides of the arena into a semi circle. I've noticed that if I push too hard into a corner, they tend to compress on the turn then shoot out on the straight away. The bigger arc helps to keep the pace consistent and gives me more room to push with the inside leg, correct with the outside leg, and slowly fill the outsi...

Whew, this one is late, but bear with me.

After my last lesson on Liberty , Trainer G and I made a plan to do a similar jump lesson on Blackjack. It was clear that I knew how to work through the exercises. The next logical step was to do them on the horse that I'm, ya know, actually paying to lease. Long story short, it did not go well. Blackjack came out pretty amped. He was injected, did a beginner lesson a couple of days later, then my jump lesson maybe a day or two after that. Between the newfound joint mobility and the lack of undersaddle time, he came out pretty fresh and ready. He was very looky, and there were enough things happening outside the arena to hold his attention. It's not a big deal; Liberty was literally the exact same at my last lesson. We worked through it without an issue. What bothers me is that it feels like every time I get on Blackjack, he's amped. It genuinely feels like the horse straight up does not like me or my energy. As much as I try to remain calm, it's getting disheartening t...

The title says it all. Back when I first started filming my rides, I had a trusty, cheap Canon that got the job done to say the least. It was honestly a great camera, and I got some nice shots on it before upgrading to my DSLR. When I eventually got dirt in the cheap camera, and it stopped opening up, I needed a different option. At the time, I couldn't afford a new video camera. With that in mind, a Solo Shot or Pixio were out of the question. The DSLR is also not great at filming. Like, at all.  I've always been a visual learner. I get a lot out of filming my rides and watching the videos. Additionally, running a blog (and a vlog) means that I need media otherwise you would all shy away from my big blocks of text. When cameras were no longer available, my next best option was a cellphone which inherently does not capture as good of an image as a camera. Over the past few years, I've learned some tips not only to improve the video quality but also to get the most out of y...