Better and Better

I know this isn't a revelation to any of you out there reading this but like.... lessons make you ride better.... even when you're not IN the lesson. SORCERY. As a result, we have been having THE BEST rides lately! They're not perfect -- Ruby still wants to occasionally act like right bend is fake news and that any application of leg means GO FAST NOW, but I've got the tools to deal with it, and the key -- I know what good should feel like for us at this moment. Is good a moving bar? Yes, I don't want to stagnate forever, but for THIS MOMENT, I know what kind of work Ruby is capable of, and generally how to get that work out of her. And if we're struggling, I know the problem areas of my body to check and make sure I'm not impeding things. 

Unamused that I have her number and that her old evasions don't get the same results. 

This ride, she was SO SO GOOD in everything I asked her to do in the first 20 minutes that I called it quits and we just wandered around the yard and woods for a while. 

#toodling

'Tis the season

I finally broke out my Fleck whip! And remembered why I don't usually carry a whip - I am NOT COORDINATED.... lol. 

Cinna wondering when its her turn to go back to work. 

"Ride me, plz?"

No thanks you filthy Iberian hippo!

Me hosing Ruby off after my ride and hoping she was still clean the next time I got her out. 

NOPE. Sigh. I hate this time of year. Last week it was still too warm to leave her rainsheet on but her hair is long enough that it is a total PITA when she gets muddy. Which she does. Frequently. 

Oh hey look, I cleaned up the Iberian hippo!

The day I got Cinna out to ride I was SO STOKED - and then while I was tacking her up, the neighbor decided to mow the fenceline in a bright orange shirt and start popping in and out of her line of sight (which is usually enough to melt her brain). She hadn't been ridden in like... 6 weeks? (oh look, if it isn't the consequences of my own stupid actions, sigh). I told my friends to pray for me... and then Cinna made me eat my words by being terrifyingly well behaved. She spooked once at a branch crashing in the woods (fair, it startled me too), and she scooted once when my phone changed songs from something soft to something a little more scream-o (lol fine Cinna, you don't like Fall Out Boy, duly noted). Aside from that she spent the first half of the ride doing her llama impression (again, not a big deal, she's been off), and then she spent the last 20 minutes giving me nice, soft, adjustable trot, including trotting on the buckle through the corner of the arena that she's normally convinced is full of dead people. 

<3 <3 <3

After I finished up with Cinna, I threw the bareback pad on Ruby. 

And sweet-talked DH into a short bareback ramble

We did swing through the arena to work on a few canter departs. 

Best part about being an AA? Rainbow glitter and spikes, naturally. 

This was from a ride the day after my lesson. Not to be a broken record, but she was GOOD.
SO GOOD. 

Even though it was shitty hot and we both got drenched in sweat. It should not be 90 degrees in mid-October. Of course, mother nature swung too far the other way and the following day was 60 and shitty rainy all day. 

I freshened up her roach. 

And lamented how clean and shiny she was and would not stay, because rain was in the forecast. SOB. 

That mostly catches us up through last weekend, but spoiler alert, I am in Indiana RIGHT NOW with Jen so hopefully I have fun stories to tell you next week about the cob show!