Balance

I just dont know what to do with that mare. I was feeling pretty lousy on Saturday and Robert wasn't around so I got star out becuase she needs to be ridden as often as possible. I tried the standing martingale on her, it was too big. The breastplate was almost too small! A first in my experience rounding up tack for Star. She was feeling pretty spazzy.

I took her out and she was unhappy about this piece dangling off of the martingale. Everyone offered to fix it because it was clearly bothering her. I told them she could deal with it, and rode on. It started to bother me too, so as soon as she calmed down about it I got off and knotted the loose piece and then got back on.

She was really bad about the scary end of the arena today. She doesn't listen to my inside leg very well. Plus I cant get over my habit of using a lot of outside rein when she's spooking away from the barrels. She got cropped a lot on saturday for ignoring my inside leg. She was displeased. After a while she would listen to my inside leg but she would also start cantering through the turn after the scary side was behind us. At least she's got it into her head that its sortof OK to canter. Is that progress?

In the process of frequently asking her to come down to the trot I discovered that I can hold her together at a canter and she does a nice, balanced, collected canter. I absolutely refuse to spend my time and energy under saddle holding her over her own damn feet. On the other hand if she is allowed to go on a loose rein its a mess. A big part of her problem is that she is going too fast to stay balanced through the turns in the arena.

I'm starting to lean towards the idea of taking her outside and letting her go until she figures out that she is allowed to slow down. She has the same problem at the trot too. Maybe I'll start out woking on the trot and letting her learn that she can slow down at a trot. The problem is she will canter out there if she's allowed to trot long enough. I dont want to have to hold her to the correct gait all the time. Maybe I should lunge her first.

I dont like doing that because she gets herself all worked up, and she gets pissy when she gets tired. It seems worth a shot though. I really dont want her cantering through our trot circles in the dressage test. I think that would embarrass me.

I tried doing lots of walk trot transitions in the arena on saturday. I didn't really notice a huge difference. For some reason she really wants to sprint across the short side of the arena. I did lots of down transitions in the middle of the arena to try and combat that. I went back and forth between doing my transitions where I wanted them no matter what stupid stuff she was doing, and waiting instead for her to calm down and then doing the transition.

Maybe I should be doing trot poles under saddle? I really dont know. Anyway, I rode her for an hour and a half or so and then put her away.

I took out dylan and cross tied him while I ate my lunch. At first I had him in the short ties but the flies were getting to him. He didn't try to move while he was in the short ties, I guess it was pretty obvious that he was stuck. When I put him in longer ties though he tried to walk off. The way it works out though, I discovered, is that when he is standing where he is supposed to he can bite at the flies, when he is too far forward then he cant. I put some fly spray on him but that only helped a little. When I was done with my lunch I left him tied while I put 'leather new' on star's bridle.

When I was done with that I got out a curry comb and started currying dylan's back. People talk all the time about a horse coming through their back, or lifting their back. If you ever want to see this in action, I reccomend rubbing Dylan's back. I swear it came up two inches into my curry comb and he did the lip thing and I rubbed him until my arms were tired. He was disapointed when I stopped. He had this look on his face like he wanted to groom me back so that I would keep grooming him. He didn't try it though. I put him back and sat around for a while doing nothing.

I took star out again with some carrots to try to work on doing the cross rail. I put it way too high, apparently. She doesn't seem to get this whole thing about jumping in the middle where the jump is the lowest. Anyway we fought over that for a long time. I kept lowering it by dragging the standards further apart. I even set both poles back on the ground but she still fussed about it. (I had started with both poles on the ground side by side and she did that no problem.)

Anyway the moral of the story is twofold, 1) Need to start her out with an insanely low crossrail and 2) I'm an idiot for insisting on working on this project. I think I'm doing it because I think Gloria would like to hear about star jumping under saddle, I think that it would add to her value if she could do 18 inch cross rails, and it was really fun the one time we jumped the bank (at least going up was fun, going down slightly less so.) She actually, liked jumping the bank, I swear. So she'll learn to like doing the cross rails, or at least she'll think of them as an easy source of treats. its going to be painfull sending her over a two inch cross rail over and over and over again many many days in a row but I think I'm stubborn/stupid enough to keep at it.