I approached today’s ride on Bobby much more optimistically than I did last week.  I wasted an optimistic mood.

We seemed to start off all right, at least until the first corner.  From there on Bobby decided to pull every evasion out of his bag of tricks.  First, he took exception to the bit, curling up under whenever he wanted to disobey my aids.  After a minute or so I went in to Shannon and she tightened his cheek pieces a hole to see if that would improve…

I must confess that I approached my ride on Bobby today with sort of a hopeless feeling.  So I spent the grooming time giving his head a good scratching, hoping that if I made him feel good he might be more cooperative.  Bobby is always such a good boy during grooming and tacking up, he puts up with the indignity of the spray bottle, and he is very good during tacking up.  Shannon has him trained so she can tighten the girth without having to hold the reins at all, and Bobby…

I got to ride three times this week. 

Mia was an angel, since Debbie had a cantering lesson in the main ring I rode in the other ring with two girls exercising their horses.  Mia was so good, she stayed at the walk each and every time the horses galloped (yes, gallop, not a canter) past her, she did not flinch when the horses were galloping towards her.  Her whole attitude was--“I’m in my thirties, I don’t need to run around any more!”   I was sort of limited with…

In the last two weeks I’ve only ridden three times, instead of six times.  Car repairs, seeing my grandson, jury duty for my husband, just one thing after another interfering with my riding, plus I have been working with a new bit.  Of course the universe does not cooperate perfectly when I want to try out a new bit, this is normal for me, at least it happened once before. 

Since the horses I ride had been “voting” for the Mullen mouth snaffle, and then “voting” for…

It is cooler down here this week, instead of the temperatures going up to 105° F they have been only getting up to 99° F.  Next week we will finally cool down to normal, the upper 80’s, a cold front is due to come through.

Wednesday, for my lesson, Mick started off really stiff.  I have been giving him massages with my little hand held roller massager before I ride, he really enjoys the massages but they don’t seem…

First, my deepest sympathy to all the people and horses out West dealing with the wildfires and heat, as well to the people and horses in the Mid-West and Mid-Atlantic regions after the horrible wind storm.  My prayers are with you.  However bad it is here in NC, it is much, much better than what you are going through.

I didn’t get to ride much this week, in the earlier, cooler part of the week our minivan was at the repair shop so I could not get my lesson. …

We had a nice spring, until the day before the Solstice, then wham, 90° F or above every day.  No more springtime weather for us down here in the South. 

On Wednesday I told Debbie I would not be able to do much more than a walk.  As usual Mick was stiff right behind the saddle so I did my usual warm-up of gradual turns and the three speeds of the walk.  After 15 minutes Debbie looked at my face and decided what I needed was to go on a trail…

Bobby is a Pony

After not being to get down off of Merlin without help I woke up last Sunday REALLY reluctant to ride him.  I couldn’t get Shannon on the phone to tell her I had to switch to someone shorter for the summer, so I took two bridles and three girths out to the farm.  Luckily I got there before Shannon had caught Merlin and she cheerfully agreed to let me ride Bobby, her British Riding Pony, who had been donated to her program because he had had…

I had some excitement riding this week.

Wednesday stuff was a bit disorganized at the barn, Debbie had gotten stuck in traffic and would be a few minutes late.  One of her teenage students kindly got, groomed and tacked up Mick for me, and this wonderful girl came out to the ring with me, helped me mount and hung around watching me until Debbie got there.  Mick was pretty stiff, so I just walked around for the first 15 minutes, some circles, some one or two loop…

Off of Merlin, that is.  Obviously I eventually got down, but this is a problem from my Multiple sclerosis that I’ve not run into since I was diagnosed.

From long before I was diagnosed, I had started sort of vaulting out of the saddle when I wanted to get off.  I had no problems with this method until, several months ago when I got hung up by the cantle trying to vault off Mick the first time I rode him.  So I started practicing getting off the normal way since I had…

As Mia trains my hands to her satisfaction I keep finding myself going back to Piero Santini’s discussion on hands in his books, “Riding Reflections” (1933), and “Learning to Ride” (1941).  Santini was a student of Caprilli’s, and his books were the first ones in English explaining the Forward Seat, back then the new system of riding.  In an earlier blog, “Another Blast From the Past--Caprilli on Contact“, (…

I finally found and got something I have spent decades looking for, a leather fringe brow band.  I was drooling over the Smith Worthington sole-leather treed jumping saddles and started looking at the bridle gear on their web site when I found it!  Luckily my tack store has a relationship with Smith Worthington so I was able to order one.  This week I have introduced all three of the horses I ride to this new piece of gear.  I am happy, happy, happy.  I had sort of made one…

Last week I was all buzzed up, I had gotten Merlin to move!  I sat and thought and thought over what Mia had taught me about the importance of tongue movement.  One thing that occurred to me was that maybe I was not giving enough rein to let Mia’s tongue move freely since my fingers on the side of the pushing hind leg were moving maybe a millimeter further than with the other hand, and I decided to try moving my fingers forward a little bit more (like a ¼ inch) to see if she…

Sometime last week while I was thinking about my lack of progress with Merlin I got to thinking about how a horse moves with his whole body.  As my body gets more together with riding at a walk I’ve noticed that when:

     The horse pushes off with his hind leg,

     The front leg on the same side is moving forward (and the top of the shoulder moves back),

     The horse’s barrel on the same side is moving out to meet my leg,

     The…

Ah, this week everything returned to normal, I got to ride three times this week!  Hurrah!

Since I had not gotten to ride Merlin for two weeks I had a vague hope that Merlin would decide to move.  When I approached him while Shannon was grooming him he greeted me with a nose bump and generally did not seem too upset to see me.  Shannon said that she had no trouble catching him today, so when I mounted him I was full of hope.  We got Merlin through the gate…

A few weeks ago I was in a used bookstore trying to find a horse book I didn’t already have and that might teach me something new.  The only one I could find was one written 30 years ago on race horse conditioning.  I got it, I wanted a new horse book!  When I got home I was looking through it and found a whole chapter on the walk.  If you have been reading my blogs you know that when I ride I walk a lot.  With my MS I just do not have the energy to do much more, usually I…

Luckily for us in NC the weather decided to switch back from early summer to spring, so this week we have cool mornings and the afternoons will be pleasant.  The horses are still shedding so that they are not completely unprotected from the cooler temperatures.  Plus the gnats did not descend upon us until I started my ride.  Yeah for cooler weather!

Merlin was not very cooperative with me today.  I do not know if he is afraid that his…

When I got to ride Merlin today I did not have big hopes since he “got away” with standing for 15 minutes last week.  As usual I waited for Merlin to sigh, and then I did my escalation of my driving aids, WALK, light squeeze with both legs, then a light touch of my spurs.  To my utter surprise Merlin started walking after making me wait only one minute. …

     When I re-started riding Merlin 6 weeks ago Shannon warned me that Merlin would not move for anybody.  I told her I had thought over what I had done earlier and that I had decided that I had to change the way I rode Merlin, and that the BIG change was that I was willing to wait for Merlin to move from simple and light driving aids.  I also told her that I was prepared to ride him 5 times before I…

The weather here in the sunny South has been 20 degrees F higher than normal.  The weather forecasters have been telling us that we are getting May weather, not March weather.  Due to this we are now getting some bugs that are bad in May, namely gnats.  Millions of gnats.  Gnats in the ears, gnats flying up nostrils, gnats getting behind my glasses, luckily there is fly spray for the horses!  I am going to have to dig out my ear nets for the horses.  I just wish there were head nets…