Unorganized Thoughts

     Yesterday was a gorgeous day. We had that perfect sunny and 75 with a breeze. That breeze was blowing in cold temperatures for today, but I chose to ignore that fact. After helping with some barn chores and grooming a somewhat muddy Mort it was time to get going.

     He started a bit behind my leg. Even in his loose rein walk he was pokey. Since we've been struggling a lot with straightness I wanted to play a lot with leg yield in a stair step pattern. Essentially, I'd ask for leg yield for a couple strides then straighten for a couple strides, then leg yield again and so on. He started off very sticky and tense so I did my best to reward the small efforts. It's sometimes (oftentimes) hard for me to drop my expectations to match the ride but Mort is teaching me that if I do that at the beginning of the ride and just slowly chip away at things we'll end those rides better than we would have if I rode like a drill sergeant.

     With our straightness struggles we've been having more issues with uneven contact and head tilting. I did my absolute best to almost ignore his head and just focus on what his legs were doing. I definitely have the tendency to get too busy with my hands trying to fix the symptom instead of the underlying problem. He kept trying to bend left instead of cross his hind legs for me while asking for him to move off my left leg. It wasn't a bad answer since we've been working on bend so much lately, but apparently I broke the sideways while doing that. We'll have to spend a few more rides working on those leg yields.

     After getting some mediocre (but mostly relaxed and non-explosive) work at the walk and trot I started adding walk/trot/walk transitions into our lateral work. I'd sometimes ask within the leg yield and sometimes I'd ask at the beginning or end to let him go forward for a stride or three before asking to yield again. He did a lot better in the upward transitions than in the down. There is still a part of him who thinks "legs on" means forward. I think I've let him train me (for the worse in this case) on that too.

     I got two awesome canter transitions and cantered about a circle each direction. The canter was decent and our walk and trot were still meh, so I left the canter for another day. I threw in lots of figure eights and some shoulder-in off the rail in our walk/trot work as well. By the end of the ride he had improved a lot. Still not our best day but I was glad we could work through some things and the ride mostly got better and better as we went. Small victories.

     I'm not sure why, but the days when it feels like he's reverted back so far in our training really frustrate me as a human. I know logically that horse training is not a linear progression. I know we have to enjoy the journey. I know bad days will happen and that I need to brush them off. I know this is something I really need to work on as a rider. Yet, I still find myself getting frustrated on some of these days (like on Tuesday).

     After a really bad, frustrating ride I always ride the next ride better. I come out with the slowest and most methodical approach. I can ignore the "bad" stuff and just work on improving it. In spite of this, there are still days where I accidentally allow myself to get frustrated. I need to look at the bad days as a learning opportunity because they usually highlight our problem areas wonderfully. I can't skip over something that is just OK. Hopefully the more aware I get the less I will let frustration into my rides; I'm sure Mort feels the same way.

     This is probably my biggest struggle as a rider; I'm crooked and have uneven hands but frustration only makes it all worse. Got to fix my problem and then work on any remaining symptoms.