Work Smarter

It's official.

My horse is too big for me.

On Friday night, I had to let my stirrup down a hole to get on from the mounting block after I decided that only getting half of my big toe in the stirrup wasn't going to do the job. One hole longer and it was easy.

Gotta look up at his his back now. Sticked him at a solid 15.3hh last night.

Now, at some point, I'm hoping to ride a hole longer for flat work. But riding my trampoline of a baby horse is not yet conducive to staying balanced with longer stirrups. So I either get a taller mounting block built or Stitch learns to wait a few more seconds at the block until I get my stirrup back to the right length.

Once I got on, I had a pretty good ride with some breakthrough moments.

At a walk, he's actually feeling quite broke. I mean, we've spent a lot of time there this year, so there's a reason for that. He bends easily, accepts contact, and when I picked up my reins I realized that he almost feels like I could ask anything of him.

And then we trot, and it's like "oh, right".

Unfortunately, having things figured out at a walk does not mean that it works the same way at a trot. Especially in a young horse. 

I'm really happy with this walk frame.

One thing that I've really been working on at the walk is being able to stay bent in the direction of travel and move away from the inside leg. All summer the left side was the tricky side, but it seems to have swapped. On this ride he gave me multiple moments to the left where, when I actually remembered to use my inside leg, he made an adjustment and moved out on the circle or turn. 

To the right - not so much. 

Good news is I ride better to the right, and although that is the leg that I injured earlier this year it feels pretty good in the saddle, so I don't think it's going to be an ongoing issue. 

The main reason that we were having problems is because he's been diving to the inside towards the gate down the long side, and when we get to the corner he's counter bent with his right shoulder dropped in. We schooled stopping in the corners, and that helped a bit, but I need to start throwing a circle in at B to see if that helps to reset his shoulders before we head into the short end. This week we're going to move up to 1min30sec trots, so there will be a bit more time to start adding some more circles and see if we cnn tidy that up.

It's going to be a little bit of a "work smarter not harder" plan for the rides for a while. 

Which might also apply to just getting into the saddle. 

Or I could sell him and get a pony...

Lucky for him he's the right colour. 

I guess I'll figure out how to jump higher.