So far I'm doing pretty well on my resolution to take regular lessons. I've made two weeks in a row! I think that may be some kind of record for me. It works out very well. I hook up the trailer and take Hoss to the ranch where Beth now has her business, he hangs out while I do any farrier work Beth needs done, and we take our lesson. The major benefit of this routine for me is I don't have to make separate trips to this ranch in order to work there. I'm just there nearly every Friday. I chose Friday because it's the most common day of the week that I have consistently off. I've come to make a habit of not scheduling work for Fridays, since I hate to reschedule stuff. Fridays are a bad day, since I have to leave for endurance rides on Fridays. Since it's Beth, though, I know that skipping a week due to leaving for rides won't be a big deal, and since I'll be there most weeks, none of the horses she needs seen by me will go without appropriate care.
This week we built on the work we did last week on my riding position. Now we added in getting my legs to move. My big obstacle is still my feet and ankles. I simply have one heck of a time getting them to move! I tend to hold them stiff and stationary, which isn't conducive to good riding. I need my legs from my knees down to swing freely, and my feet to stay heels down. This means I must flex my ankles. As my leg swings back, I can't let my foot stay in the same position, I must push my heels down and draw my toes up. For me, this is very difficult. I did get my left leg doing it fairly easily, although I suffered a hamstring failure and had to pause to stretch the cramp out of it. Interestingly, I used a visualization from my spin class to get my leg moving correctly. The spin instructor tells us to imagine our feet sweeping the floor on the downstroke. Using this image, I was able to get my foot moving more correctly, at least on the left. My right leg, however, was much, much more difficult. Beth told me it looked like I was a jerky robot when I tried to move my right leg. And wow, did it hurt to do it! I had cramps in places I didn't know I had muscles. I did get one compliment. Beth said I was having trouble communicating with my ankles and feet, which is a huge improvement over the trouble I had communicating with anything from my hips down!
On Sunday, I hauled Hoss out to our local gymkhana. My daughter joined me, and we took turns riding Hoss. We're (thankfully) in different divisions now, as she beat my time on my own horse every time.
It was a really hot day – although cooler at the arena than at home – so I filled Hoss's travel bucket with water and set up his hay bag and we let him rest between events. They started with the 40 and overs this time, then the 13-39 age group, so it went pretty fast and we were able to take Hoss to the trailer and take him back to the arena when the arena crew started changing over to the next event. He drank very well and ate like, well, a horse.
In barrels, we did pretty well, except I got ahead of myself and turned Hoss before we even got to the first barrel. This confused him mightily, and he looked askance at the rest of the barrels. My daughter did much better. Although they trotted around the barrels, they managed to canter up to them, something I didn't manage to do.
The next event was called the Big M. Basically the barrels are set up in an opposite manner to regular barrels, and you run around them to form a big "M." It was interesting because it meant the horses would be headed "toward home" when they were approaching the second barrel, and many of the horses felt sure this meant they were done and tried to run out. Hoss handled this one pretty well all things considered, and when he did it with my daughter, again, they did better.
The third event was speed barrels. This is three barrels set up in a line, and you simply weave through them up and back. Hoss was a bit of a stinker in this event. He tried to run out on me, and my daughter had to keep him to a trot because he was trying to bolt with her.
The last event was speed ball, in which you ride down to a traffic cone on an old egg crate, drop a golf ball into the traffic cone, and ride back out. This is not as easy as it sounds. By this time, the horses are all pretty hopped up – at least, mine was – and you need the horse to stop long enough to let you put that ball in the cone. The horse is pretty sure the cone is hiding something and doesn't want to get close to it. Of course, the rider is concentrating on the cone, which convinces the horse he's right about its nefarious intentions. I got Hoss to stop long enough for me to get the ball in – a first for us in this event. My daughter's description of how she got Hoss to stop long enough to drop her ball in. As they approached the cone, she started asking him, "What's that, Hoss?" This caused Hoss to say, "What? You don't know what it is? I don't know what it is. How come you don't know what it is?" This resulted in Hoss stopping and sniffing the cone – he had, after all, already seen it once and nothing had happened other than me being happy I got the stupid ball in the stupid cone – which gave my daughter the time she needed to drop her ball in and ride him back.
The gymkhana was over by noon. I hauled Hoss home and gave him a good rinsing off before returning him to his pasture. I got rather a lot of napping done that Sunday afternoon. It had been a long week, and I needed the sleep.
No comments:
Post a Comment