Hanging On For Dear Life

Banditry

2005-10-17T23:34:00.000-04:00

Last Thursday I rode Bandit in class, and even got to work some on cantering (on a longue line). We also did stirrupless work, which totally worked my inner thighs. I got to work on a lot of sitting trot, since Bandit has one of the smoothest trots I've been on. Soooooooooooo smooooooooooooth in fact that it's easier to sit his trot than to post it.

Bandit's cute. Lazy, but cute.

Rocky Mountain High

2005-09-15T22:21:00.000-04:00

Today I rode Aspen again.

Searching for a positive experience

2005-09-13T23:08:00.000-04:00

So, the goal today was to not fall off. Mission accomplished. :)

I rode Aspen. When we showed up for class today, the beginning class before our intermediate class was in the ring for the first time. Apparently, however, the barn only has 7 riser pads, so I was the odd one out (4 in the ring, 3 being saddled in the barn). Aspen and I had to wait until the beginners got done to tack up. Let's just say that after a summer of gorging himself on succulent pastures, Aspen is no longer a svelte 46 is the girth department. However, he needs a fuzzy girth, and I also was not aware of his new-found portliness, so I spent 5-10 minutes wrestling with the girth to just BARELY get it to stretch enough to reach the bottom holes on the billets. (Aspen certainly wasn't helping by willfully bloating.) After working up quite a stretch, I then realized, much to my utter dismay, that during the titanic struggle between me and the girth, both the riser and extensor pads had slipped completely out of place. So, back to square one. Repeat process.

Once I had Aspen appropriately saddled, lesson went fairly uneventfully. The whole class, I think, took a step down from our level last week. We did have a new student who actually hadn't ridden since she was 13, and so we went slow for her, as well as for me. Connie got to ride Lucy, who is still rather green, and even still a bit too much for her. We mostly worked on trotting and steering, and Aspen and I performed admirably slaloming through a series of cones at the posting trot. We set the benchmark for the rest of the class! Woo!

Then Aspen decided that he had had enough, and kicking and prodding wasn't going to get him going again. Sigh. Ah, Aspen...

Oliver! (not the Musical)

2005-09-08T21:37:00.000-04:00

Oliver is a big, bay, pure draft horse of indeterminate French/Belgian origins (Percheron/Comtois/somethingorother). He just arrived on the farm yesterday, where apparently Sara had taken him out to ring by himself to the arena for a test drive. Oliver cried the whole time because he was away from other horses, all by his lonesome. Today, he showed the same sort of concern about what his new buddies at Quail Roost were up to at all times.

Oliver is huge. 17.2 hands. I can't see over him, or reach the top of him easily for grooming. But he's awesome. You can tell that he's a big, kind, and pretty intelligent horse (but not quite smart enough to figure out how to untie a daisy chain knot--though he tried). He's calm and, well, I think he's beautiful. He's also got feet the size of dinnerplates, and he practically stomps around as if to hear himself walk. There's no sneaking up on anyone for Oliver, all 1800-2000 lbs of him.

Oliver's got a ton of sway in his walk, but his trot is very nice and comfy. He's kind of lazy, but a sweetheart. We worked on our two-pointing, which Sara complimented me on, and our sitting trot (I was a little stiff from the Tuesday incident with Sammy and jumping, so I've got to work on loosening up). Then, it came time to canter. Oliver doesn't canter very easily (I had better luck with Sammy). But he is voice-activated, so with some encouragement from Sara and Kelly, we did get him moving briefly. He's got a nice canter (what I've seen of it for about 50 feet). We tried to get him going again, with the aid of a crop and much verbal cheering on. I just barely tapped Oliver with the crop and gave him the cantering leg aids, and he flipped. Flipped. He bucked and took off at a little bit more than a canter.

It is a long way down off of Oliver.

So, for the second time in as many lessons, I became acquainted with the gravel of the arena. Whee. Stars and stuff. Peter's going to have to use a forklift to get me out of bed in the morning. Hooray for being aware that your pelvis is in fact made up of several bones that can wiggle a little. Hooray for a sore neck and shoulder that spawned a migraine. Hooray.

But I got back on and walked around on Oliver. Now it's no jumping and no cantering for a while. I'm sooooo out of shape and off balance. It's never been my strong suit. I fall over walking down the street. But I've fall off of and fallen for Oliver.

Well, if you fall, fall gracefully...

2005-09-06T19:40:00.000-04:00

Today it was not nearly so hot as it was last Thursday (thank goodness, I nearly passed out last time...). Once again, I was on Sammy, who again decided that he wants to dive into the center of the ring and join his buddy Aspen all the time. We worked on the sitting trot (I like this), shoulder-in trotting down the long side, and leg-yielding. Sammy had his head in the air most of the time (in part because I couldn't use his martingale because it was too tight for him, in part because he likes to string himself out like that). We also worked on cantering, which I didn't get to do too much of because most of my individual time was spent keeping Sammy on a straight path. Eventually we got that going for short stretches of straight cantering. We're working on it.

Then it came time for jumping. Now, it was just a little cross rail like I've jumped a number of times before, but... Sammy gets really wired and anxious about jumping. (Heh heh...kinda like me...). So I point Sammy at the jump and he gets going on this fussy, frantic trot with his head in the air. I keep trying to get him settled, but still moving forward. Last couple of strides, Sammy decides to canter and then launched himself in an oversized leap over the piddly little cross rail. I did well on the up and over, but on the landing, I tipped forward. Sammy came up again with his head in the air. I whacked my chest and chin on his withers and neck before toppling over sideways. I did roll nicely on hitting the gravel in the arena. Whoo! No worse for wear except for briefly getting the wind knocked out of me (unlike the incident with Surprise...). I got back on, but Sara had me do groundwork after that, with just a bit of two-pointing over cavaletti. Unfortunately, even doing that made Sammy uber-anxious and hyper, so we left it at that for the day.

Sara said she's going to try me on a different horse next time--I need to work on my own skills at the canter without having to also worry about Sammy's issues about cantering along the rail with his head in the air as well. Apparently we've got a couple of new horses coming in, especially a huge Belgian warmblood, that will push-button walk/trot/canter without batting an eye.

[Brushes the dust from the arena off of herself and gives bratty Sammy a good scratch on the neck]

A nice steady calm horse?

I'm up for that.

First Day

2005-09-06T19:30:00.000-04:00

So this is going to be a blog/journal of my semester of intermediate horseback riding at UNC. Our classes are at Quail Roost Stables at Quail Roost Farms in Rougemont, NC, every Tuesday and Thursday.

Our first lesson was actually last Thursday, Sept. 1, and I hadn't been out to the barn since April. Most of the same old faces are there, still: Sammy, Spirit, Mac, Ginger, Aspen, Pepper, Cruzin', Wishbook, etc. Spirit herself is quite ticked because she spent all summer in the mare pasture getting fat from eating all the time, so now she's on a strict diet of no grass. Doubly pissy mare! (Speaking of which, in French, an ill-tempered mare is called "une pisseuse"...)

The barn's been repainted and it looks great! It's all clean and tidy, too, and all the horses have new fans on their stalls.

Sara wanted our first lesson to be a chance for us to all get back on board and evaluate our skill levels. I got to get back on Sammy. Sammy's the same as he's ever been... He's still the musical horse, farting along in time with his trot, and trying to bite me when I tighten the girth until I look him in the eye and make noises of disapproval.

Sammy was a little hyper, but we were put through all our paces, and he did really well--and I did too! Riding a horse IS like riding a bicycle, though I ended up very, very sore in all those inner thigh muscles that I haven't used since last spring. We also worked on cantering, and Sammy actually cantered for me, for the first time ever. Steering, however, did not exactly happen.