I Got to Ride Christmas Day!

The last two weeks have been sort of odd.  First, my gut decided that something was not right and acted up too much to ride, and when I did ride I got exhausted after only 20 minutes in the saddle.  I got my gut issues under control enough so I could go see my oldest son finally get his PhD degree, a process that has taken many years.  Between all of this I just got to ride twice, a much needed ride on Cider so I could get back to walking steadily on my own two feet after sitting for over 4 hours for the graduation ceremony.  Sitting for 4 hours on a hard chair did not do me any good, I had trouble negotiating the crowd walking back to the car.  Then I got to ride Mia yesterday, I got to ride on Christmas day!

It has been warm down here, the wood frogs are peeping all over, bugs are still invading the house, and it has been raining, we got over 5 ½ inches in the last two weeks.  All the ponds are full or overflowing, the Rocky River is over its banks, and there is plenty of mud.  Some of the flatter fields now are shallow lakes, the horse’s winter coats are all matted, and there are even some flies plaguing the horses.  Of course it could have been worse; all that rain could have ended up as feet of snow.

Cider is still responding to my new aid of pushing my belly forward and bringing my back in.  So far I have only used this aid for backing up, and if I am going to use this aid for anything else I will have to start using it for other movements or it will end up as an aid for backing up only.  The first time I used this aid it was in the treeless saddle, the next two times I was riding in my dressage saddle.  Cider noticed this aid immediately with the treeless saddle, in the treed saddle it was, at first, “are you really giving an aid?” to “I guess you are giving a weak aid, maybe I should ignore it,” to “yes, you are giving a very light aid and I will be nice and not ignore it completely.”  She is backing up a lot slower than when I use my hands and my legs to signal her, and I have to make sure that my seat is centered and my hands are even for her to back up straight.  Still, it is very nice of Cider to even notice this aid; it is so much more subtle in effect than hands, legs, or driving my seat bones into the saddle, and she could easily ignore it completely.  I am now thinking that the more modern driving the seat bones into the saddle became popular because the response from the horse is so much more dramatic than the response from just bringing the waist forward.

When I got to the stable yesterday I was sort of dreading dealing with Mia’s coat after so much rain.  I got distracted by Debbie’s new puppy, a really, really, really cute Golden Retriever that she got for Christmas.  The puppy was running around, then just plopping itself down for a nap wherever it was.  Darryl had to be careful to avoid the puppy snoozing in the center of the aisle when taking the wheelbarrow to the muck pile.  All morning Debbie was calling “where is the puppy?” as he got used to the barn, the horses, and all the adult dogs.

I do not know if this was just a coincidence, but when I got to the stable Mia found the one open door into the barn from the barn yard and came in on her own (stopping, of course, to eat the few grains left in the feed bucket in the empty stall.)  Amazingly there was not too much fungus in her coat, and there were no big clumps of fungus though, of course, I went over it with both slicker brushes (one with plastic ball ends on the times, one just bare wire) and my finger nails.  Her hooves really did not need rasping so I just got some of the sole off, I guess that without the big round bale in the pasture the horses get bored and move around more instead of staying in one place for hours.

The riding ring was saturated from all the rain, too wet to do anything but walk because I did not want to tear up the footing for everyone else’s Christmas ride.  At least the sun was shining, there was a warm breeze, the heron was back standing by the pond, and the duck family was enjoying the warmth.  I tried backing up Mia again by just bringing my waist forward into passive hands, and Mia ignored it once again.  Then I tried using this aid to “drive” her forward while we were walking, I may have gotten a hint of a response but if I did it was a really subtle response.  Doing this triggered muscle spasms in my back, and, since it was so warm I had not put on my BOT back brace, my back ended up really hurting.  I will have to build up my back muscles gradually because they were not happy doing this at all.  I then switched over to working on my two-point while gripping with my calf muscles.  I love the two-point, even if the ring is so sloppy that all I can do is walk, I can use it to make my riding muscles stronger, and I feel like I am accomplishing SOMETHING instead of just lolling around on the horse’s back and irritating the horse.

After 20 minutes I just ran out of energy.  I walked around a few more minutes and gave up; I was just too tired to do anything else.  BUT, I got to ride an Arabian mare on Christmas Day.  It doesn’t get any better than this!

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas.

Have a great ride!

Jackie Cochran