Ride Recap

It was hot and humid--and it's also horse fly season. Gross times a million.

My dressage saddle is away with the saddle fitter so that leaves me the options of riding bareback or in my cross country saddle. Since it was so hot I opted for the cross country saddle. After checking a few points of fit that I learned about on Sunday I felt like it fits him well enough to ride in (as I've done before).

I'm not sure if it was the hot, the day off on Sunday, or the saddle, or whatever, but Mort and I didn't start off very well yesterday. I was all buckled in for it to be one of our bad frustrating regretful rides and it really started out that way. I couldn't get him to move off of my right leg. Then I couldn't get him to bend left. So I did a ton of bend, counter-bend at the walk. I did leg yield with his head facing the rail. We had a small meltdown when we passed the open gate with that one. I did some straight leg yields across the arena. For the first time ever (probably not but if feels that way sometimes) we actually worked out of our bad mood/miscommunication/whatever.

I did much of the same work in the trot that we did in the walk and he just got better and better. There were of course a few bobbles here and there when I had to half-halt hard and refocus, but shit got better. We did some changes of direction. I added some shoulder-in. He just got softer. I thought about quitting and didn't and it somehow didn't bite me in the ass. I wondered whether or not I should canter and then I did canter and it didn't bite me in the ass either. After a bit more trot and walk after our canter I decided that I should actually quit before my luck ran out.

There are seriously few of these "bad" rides that I can turn around like that. And this was certainly the worst one that I have been able to. It wasn't on par with some of our best rides at the end, but holy crap was I happy about it anyway. I better put all that leg yield work at the walk in my toolbox for next time to see if it helps.