WW: Vacation

Blogger put vacation pictures in backwards, whatever 🙄

Manatee! (Worst photo ever I know)

15" keeper trout that he ate for dinner that evening

Blue crab

Teamwork makes the dream work. 

More crabbing

St. Petersburg beach

Exploring Florida rums

Clearwater pier

Canter Progress

I got up the day after the lesson determined to work on the canter departs some more (and just overall work on schooling at home without her losing her marbles and turning in to freight train Ruby), and was successful at both! I easily replicated all of the feelings I was getting in the lesson (which is sometimes a struggle), and all of the departs were great! Because she was so good I didn't ride long, and quit on a high note. Then we spent the rest of the day on the lake, since it looked like the last weekend of summer temps for our area (well, it's supposed to get hot again this weekend but we're in Florida). 

I was thrilled. Ruby was not 🤣

I didn't get much riding some this week because of some other stuff - my mom fell at work and got a concussion, so she came to stay a few days just to be safe. Plus we were trying to wrap up all our prep before we headed to the airport yesterday. But Wednesday night the weather was so perfect I couldn't resist the opportunity to procrastinate on my packing a bit by heading out for a ride!

This was what pushed me over the edge, how could I walk by that when it was 70 degrees and NOT want to put hoofprints on it lol. 

I still love that Brockamp pad, it's amazing. I did a few loops of sitting trot and a few canter departs and Ruby was so perfect I quit after 15 minutes and we just wandered around the yard. It was just what I needed after a rough day at work and before a week where I won't get to ride at all, womp womp. It actually worked out fine though, I was preemptively annoyed at having to miss a weekend of lessons while we're in Florida but new trainer and her barn are at Regionals anyway, so it's the perfect weekend to be gone 🤣

It'll be quiet next week (unless I can find any horse people I know near Spring Hill, Florida, and can get myself to a barn for a day lol), but I'm excited the weather finally appears to be cooling off and hopefully we'll have lots of nice weather this fall for riding!

Lesson Recap: Serpentines

I did really good writing about the lesson two weekends ago while it was fresh in my brain, but once I let a day or two elapse things get fuzzy, sigh. I really did want to write about the one last weekend as soon as I got home home, but we ended up having to go pick up our last 100 bales of hay and that wiped me out.  

Ruby's blue steel

I was trying to half-ass set her up for a conformation shot and she decided to poop instead lol. So I gave up 🤦‍♀️

DH didn't come with me (he was driving his department's float in our state's bicentennial parade), so again, no media. Not even video this time, lol. Which is a shame! We did some of our normal warm up in leg yields with a few 10m circles, and then new trainer (I need to come up with an permanent abbreviation at some point I guess) had me attempt some 3-loop serpentines. I laughed out loud when she first asked me to do one and warned her my geometry is really sketch (which honestly she knows from watching me attempt 10m circles lol), but to my surprise, they weren't.... terrible? Like yes definitely room for improvement but they were (hopefully) completely recognizable. 

Still sometimes pinch myself that this is my life 😁

We also did some exercises in the canter where she had me do a down transition after doing half a circle, just to make sure Ruby wasn't trying to take over in the canter and zoom off. It really helped keep Ruby attentive to me, even if it pissed her off a little at first. Like "gee mom you asked me to canter and I DID and now you want me to stop? Make up your mind!" Poor thing, just when she thinks she knows the rules of the game I change them on her 🤣 new trainer really cracked down (again, in a good way) on the quality of the transitions. Mentally I tend to revert to riding Ruby like she's green (news flash, she very much is not), and I was letting her giraffe and sort of fling herself willy nilly into the canter, when she is more than capable of maintaining contact and rocking back and STEPPING into it like an adult, trained horse (you know, like she is). I don't know how many times I'll have to learn that lesson, but more than the 1816382 times I've already learned it apparently 🤦‍♀️ we actually ended by doing 5 transitions in a row to the right (our "bad" way) and when I got done, new trainer was like "wait wasn't that your bad way? Those were good!" - apparently the right is only our bad way at home 🤣 spoiler alert - this lesson did more for my canter departs in 5 minutes than I've successfully done on my own in 5 years. So yeah. Lessons FTW haha.