Success and Cavaletti

Many many hours fighting with technology later, guess who finally successfully video'd a ride?! Friday was rainy and pretty gross by the time I got home from work, so I didn't worry about riding. I was mostly focused on decompressing from a fairly stressful week-- mission accomplished! Saturday dawned rainy and gross again, but thankfully the sun came out in the afternoon. After a visit to a friend to see some cute kittens and baby goats, I came home refreshed and ready to ride and play with the Pixio some more! (It didn't hurt that we also picked up some landscape timbers to use as cavaletti, yay!)

Cute lil bottle baby Boer

Kittens!

Yasssss poles. I need to paint them white so they're visually a little more different than the sand, whoops. Baby steps!

I set the poles, got Cinna all tacked up, set all the electronic bits and pieces out, and I was ready to go! I turned the camera on, but I was having some technical difficulties with the new SD card that arrived Saturday morning. I didn't want to mess with it again while I had Cinna tacked up, so I just switched the camera to record to internal memory, and resolved to deal with the SD card stuff later. Unfortunately the difficulties meant I didn't get any recording of our first two walks through the poles, so you don't get video of the excessive amounts of wiggling and tripping that went on, lol. But she's a smart cookie, and she figured things out quickly!

Abstract art ;) or, EquiLab tracking of our ride, haha.

I was pleasantly surprised that she didn't seem to notice (or care?) about the Pixio beacons and the camera in the corner. Considering how sensitive she can be to even the tiniest changes, I'm a little shocked she had no reaction, but no complaints! After reviewing the video, I think I'm going to have to switch the camera placement -- the setting sun interferes a bit with the visibility, so I need to move it to the other side of the arena. Which of course means that most of the background is going to be the barn and my muddy drylot, but whatevs I guess... haha. I typically ride in the evenings so that will probably continue to dictate where I put the camera. Although if I do summer hours, riding will happen more in the morning, so maybe I'll just have to move the camera around based on when I'm riding. Mostly I'm just talking this out on the blog, sorry you get to read my mental gymnastics.

I laughed because it's SO TRUE.

We worked on the buckle and with contact (I'm not gonna say on the bit, because she's not, not even a little bit). We actually did some trotting on the buckle, and it was nice to feel how she let me influence the tempo. We cantered both directions without any histrionics, although the damp sand making her work a little harder might have helped me out there ;) we walked and trotted the poles, and after some initial confusion and run outs, she tried very hard to be steady through them.

First attempt on camera. I decided to regroup at the end and start over, haha. 

Next attempt was much better!

At any rate, it was a good, productive ride. We're just plugging away at the basics, so I'm sure for anyone watching, it would be like watching paint dry. Pretty sure DH is less mad about the Pixio than he would normally be about a frivolous horse-related purchase because now it means I won't be obsessively annoying him to come watch me and take media. I'll still want photos periodically, but at least with HD video every ride, I'll have enough to obsess over. Going through video from even just a half-hour ride took ages!

Due to where I set the camera, apparently all the best moments above a walk are tracking right, haha. 

Neither of us are very fit (thanks shitty cold winter and then ridiculously wet spring), but we had a nice 30+ minute ride with some good moments.

I also have no idea what happened to the lighting in this one? Oh technology. I love to hate you. 

Sunday morning was devoted to further tinkering with technology. I needed to update the firmware on the Pixio, and then download some files to make my SD card compatible with the camera. I was able to test it set up in my living room (I put the tracker on a dachshund, lol) and I think I finally have everything functional the way I want it now! Little bit of a learning curve, but I think it's going to be worth it long term to be able to review my rides. Even just spending an hour or two going over Saturday's easy ride, I identified about 2349834571 things I'd like to work on. And despite Mother Nature spitting a little bit of snow on us yesterday, I feel pretty confident that spring is actually here, so hopefully more consistent work is in our future!