Another Good Ride, With Proof

I didn't time things very well for my ride on Thursday. When I arrived at the barn, there was only one horse being ridden by the western trainer and no one else around. I dropped all the jumps down to raised trotting poles after changing into breeches and went and got tacked up.

By the time I got into the arena, there was one person riding on a circle at one end in a dressage lesson, one person staying on a 15m circle at E,  a beginner lunge line lesson, and the western trainer was showing a different horse to a potential new owner.

I mean, it's a big arena, but with everyone staying in their own little spot it made trying to ride around them and the course of jumps that were set up a little difficult.

Cisco and I managed, but I didn't get as nice a ride as we had on Monday. Thankfully, our right bend mostly stayed away for a second ride. And our canter transitions were improved over the last ride - they were all quite prompt.

Our forward kinda sucked. So that was the focus of the day.

It's pretty typical of Cisco - things start happening around him and he sucks back to look. It really shows up in our walk/trot transitions. There was a lot of retesting the transition, often with the assistance of Mr. Tappy. They generally got better - the test will be to see if they stay that way for our next ride.

My goal for the ride was to do a total of 3 minutes of canter. I need to up my game at this gait to get both of us fitter and stronger.

We made it to 2:43 over about four canters. I had no gas left in my tank to do the extra 17 seconds. It wasn't overly hot out, but with all the rain we've had the humidity is pretty high. I don't deal well with heat and humidity.



The arena had mostly cleared out by this time so I took Cisco around the raised trot pole course that I had set up instead. He cantered the first line, then trotted pretty nicely around the rest. There was a line that was set as a 1 stride to a 1 stride at a canter - I had to redo that line as he really bulged to the right as we trotted through. The second time through I just opened my left rein with a little bit of right leg into the first one, and he stayed nice and straight on a mostly loose rein through the rest.

I'm pretty happy with what I see in the video. On Cisco's part at least - I need to shorten my reins, get my thumbs on top and have more elasticity in my elbows. For him, this wasn't the best ride we've had lately, but there is definite improvement over the last couple of months.

(If you listen to the video with the sound on, it sounds like we were getting dive-bombed by a plane. They are crop spraying in the area and must have been doing one of the fields across from the barn. They fly really low - it's very disconcerting when you are driving down the road!)