30. august 2012 (DL)

So I was supposed to have a really great dressage training with DL since she was in a good mood. Somehow however it turned into jumping. I loved her in warm-up. She was remarkebly soft to the hand. I have to state the fact that what is remarkebly soft with Lady means noral strong and steady contact with any other horse. Anywho she was great. Responsive to the leg. I could "play" around with her pretty nicley. Put some more pressure on with the inner leg, flex the inside rein, hold on the outside and drive her in with the outside leg. Whooaaa she was freaking working. Well mostly we did that in canter. In trot we tried some lengthend stried while keeping the collection. Well they were acceptable but not perfect. But I was starting to feel her responding to my hands. Felt good.
With jumping we started with 60-85 warm-up jumps. Both sides just something easy. Keeping DL cool from the head, no rush, no hurry. Was pretty nice. Tried to fix the distance on the oxer with different stride lengths. It worked pretty well. She was a tiny bit resistante torward the inner rein at the beginning with smaller turnes but it got better. Needed some more leg on her. The main thing today was 3 jump on 3 different heights 110/130/140. Okey so 110 was pretty good. Keeped the slow pace up first jump, gave her a little freedom to look at that and over we went. Second time tried some longer and more impulsive canter. Screwed up big time. Didn't judge the distance well so we ended up with an option A) going a bit early  B) making half an extra stride under and let her do that one on flat. I know how bad I suck with close flat ones so I preferd taking it earlier. But I guess I was dreamign of fluffy unicorns since I did not tell the horse to go earlier. So offcorse she waitid for me to say what do to...and when I was still engaged with my little unicorn dreamy thingy she got confused and had to make the decition herself. Her's was to go down flat and then jump. So I just travelled with her thinking how damn sutbid I am. No worries...fixed the distance the third time and got some pretty great jump again. Then 130 which was the best height today. She was alerted, listened to me. So basically all DL had to do was jump. I was pretty much able to do all the rest for her which ment telling her the tempo, keeping the line. And I was constanyl remembering what E. Smiley had told abotu the approach, take off, air phase, landing, and get-away. So yeah DL had to do her job and she did it perfectly. Then came the 140 which was good in general. The first jump we got a little bit too close thanks to my small turn but it went okey. On the second one we fixed our mistake, kept her a bit more shorter and she did the jump perfectly. Third one we took down. But since the impulsion and take off in general was freaking awesome I was too sadisfied with that. Next time she just needs to remember to keep those legs up =)

110

130

140

29. august 2012 (Jule)

Whit this post we have arrived to the present.

Todays horse was a surprise for me.

JUVEL aka Jule, Monkey. Maria decided that I should have the privilege to try her little white honeypie. What we did was nothing extraordinary. Just saddled him up and took a nice short but fast ride around the harvested feald next to the house. Jule was flying around like a madman. I admit, at some point it was pretty difficult to keep him under my control. He has a nice pace. What he doesn't like to do is work though. Well he does when he is in the arena but outside on the fealds it was completely different story. But we got to practice a lot of take offs, two-point which was really good for me and voice commands which Jule respected well. Good and fun for both of us.

28. august 2012 (Carms, DL, Athena)

So every hughe idea has a small start. My start is here.
All "storys" will come somwhere up here later when I have more time and I can truly concentrate to tell you all you might want to know about each individual appearing in this blog.

I would love to keep this as simple as possible but turthfully I am quite sure I will fail with it. So bare with me.

First and foremost - this blog is completely egoistic, sarcastic collection of complete bullsh*t. Whatever is said and done here should by no means used as a good example. Good laugh...yeah possible.

So time to meet the first lucky inhabitant.
WINDROSE'S ATHENA aka Athena, At, Fatty.  On this lovely august day of 28th all she had to do was lunging work. Her history as stated before will come...one day. So we were lunging. No saddle, no bridle just a halter. She is recovering from an injury so we start our work lightly. I guess we did aroun 5 + 5 minutes walk-trot on both sides. She had no balance whatsoever. Instead of rounding herself inside she perfectly tried to balance herself outside which made everything so hard that in general she was just running like a wild monkey without any concentration. I kept on talking and calming her down. Not sure if it worked. Didn't seemd like that to me. It took some nice laps to get her back to walk. And then she got back out.

MARIGNAT MAGIC CARMEN aka Carmen, Carms, Honey. Ahh on that day we went to ride in the woods. I had a godly illumination that I should bring the longest dressage whip there is in our property with me. Well first half of the way we worked on our collection. Or I worked on getting her nicely rounded and relaxed. What Carms did I am not quite sure about. She took every touch of the leg as a trigger so it was remarkably hard to get her work with her tiny little but. She also preferd me to carry her heavy head. After pushing and holding and another pushing and holding that lasted quite some time we even got some collection like form that almost kinda sorta reminded it but was not really "it". The problem with her was that she really didn't find it in her mind to respect the leg as something that tries to engage her hind legs a bit more and drive her on that damn bit (hand) that was keeping her from running away. What she saw was leg pushing - run as hell! hand keeping - keep the pace, don't run! So in her little mind she needed to decide which one was the bad guy. Not a hard guess for a little pony who likes to run. So she did all possible to fight the "hand". But the "hand" was persitante. So in the end sad little pony had to respect the fact that the hand and the leg were actully working together and telling her to drive forward from the behind and soften from the front. And what a surprise! When little Carms did that both bad guys stopped nagging with her. Hooray!
The other half of the way our main goal was steady pace. There was no more collection which was good in Carms opinion. But now there was tempo and rythm that she needed to hold. And she really needed to hold it. So no slowing down and no going faster. And she did it extremely perfectly. Pony was happy and I was happy.

DANCING LADY aka LADY, DL. She was the last one of my day. Surprised me a little with her willingness. Meaning it was astonsihingly easiER to get her collected and respect the hand. She had more respect to the leg than days before. What we did was only forward, forward, forward. Keeping her pace up but controllable and at the same time keeping her in collection. The last one was the hardest part. She tended to tense up and be like a robot. Bzzng, bzzng, bzzng. And then I would start bouncing on the orbit. With her one of the key points is the hand. She needs a moving bit. She really, REALLY needs a moving bit. So with her the hand has to be more active, more working that usually...like to remid her to stay on the bit and work. At the same time inner leg needs to keep her  back legs engaged whiel the outer leg keeps the pace up. All in all the rider has to work the butt off to get a good result out of that horse. Turns and circles are essential in her training. I trylu enjoied her willingness this time. Only time when she was really fighting against the hand was left canter which is probably her weakest point.