Sunday Shenanigans

After my lesson (weekend before last again, gosh I am so behind), a friend came over to take Cinna for a spin -- we have a girl's trail weekend planned and she was considering taking Cinna and wanted to try to get to know her a little better. She's going to end up taking a different horse (one who is a little more chill lol), but she still wanted to come play with Cinna, and it was super fun to see someone else up on her! Also somewhat of a relief that everything I warned my friend about, Cinna lived up to haha. No surprises there, but at least it's not just me she's sort of a little shit for!

My friend making her look fancy!

I just sat on the big comfy couch and watched lol. 

Once she worked her way through some of Cinna's fake spooking and pretending the bit was fake news, they had some really lovely trot work! Encouraging to me that there might be a dressage horse in there somewhere, despite her perpetually being on the backburner... sigh. 

Lesson Recap: Let Go of the Left Rein

Had another good lesson the weekend before last, although unfortunately no media to share! DH is still recovering from surgery and couldn't spend 3 hours in the truck, so I took along a friend :) TrainerB has two horses she is marketing for clients and I am hoping this friend may end up with one of them ;) both are lovely Spanish geldings, and if I had unlimited funds and time to ride a large collection of horses I wish they could come home with me, but alas, I can barely keep the ones I have in work lol. Anyway, the lesson.

Ruby always knows when its lesson day. She was gross and then grumpy about her early morning bath. 

TrainerB and I talked about the show a little bit - what went right, what could have gone better. I told her I some of the decisions I made were not the best and we talked through that -- but at least the fact that I was MAKING decisions instead of just being a lump was an improvement. Our biggest struggles at the show were in the leg yields and the canter... what else is new? So we worked on that quite a bit in the lesson. TrainerB had me doing a TON of 10m circles and then starting the leg yield coming out of that, and whenever things started to fall apart, do another 10m circle, regroup, and then try again. 

Unrelated media picture, but HOW AMAZING is this? So amazing. I cannot even. 

At the show, we struggled more with the leg yield to the right, so that's the one we started with in the lesson, and surprise surprise... 90% of the issues could be traced back to my narcissistic left hand. SIGH. TrainerB dryly pointed out that trying to pull her into a right leg yield with my left hand was not ever going to have the results I wanted, haha. After making a point to reach forward and pat Ruby on the neck every four or so strides with my left hand, I was finally able to keep it mostly where it was supposed to stay and the leg yields got better. Magic? No, just good instruction making my riding better. 

I'm actually a little sad I don't have any media, this was a BALLER outfit lol. 

The canter work was really good, the biggest problem right now is neither of us can sustain it for very long. But we had some really good moments, we both just need to be fitter and work on stringing together the good moments. Maybe by next year we'll be ready for the canter marathon that is first-three lol. On the way home my friend was telling me how impressed she was with our progress - I had forgotten the last lesson she came to watch was one of the handful of times I rode in the Custom that Ruby hated and she was a leaping dolphin about every single canter transition, so the change between then and now was night and day!

Fine Art Friday II

Oh my god y'all 🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩 had my Zoom with Bethany P Photography last night and I'm still absolutely STUNNED at the portraits of Ruby she took!

Even if you're not local to me, check her out! She travels and spends a lot of time on the east coast and in Florida and Texas!

Trail Adventures: Katy Trail x 2

I'm extra behind on these! The Saturday before and the Saturday after the show I met up with some friends at the Katy Trail - Mokane Trailhead for some easy, low-key miles. 

These photos went in backwards but ones from the second ride went in correctly, so I don't even know anymore lol. 

Spooky kid's bike thing just... abandoned in the parking lot?

Ponying for extra mileage! :)

Spooky kids bike from the beginning of the ride lol. 

It was a lovely day! Unseasonably cool and NOT miserable.

The next ride had a little bit of overlap from horses/riders, and some new faces! Trigger came along this time for a friend who wanted to ride but her horse was temporarily out of commission. 

Both days we rode as far as horses are allowed on this section of the trail (to Steedman) and then back to the trailhead at Mokane for about 8 miles. The ride after the show we had a lovely picnic lunch -- one friend brought sandwiches, one brought chips/pretzels, one brought a salad with produce from her garden (and also thin mints because she was cleaning out her freezer lol) and we just sat around enjoying a nice breeze in the shade and gabbed horses! I'm so grateful for our local horse community and friends who are happy to be flexible and explore the local trail options!

SLADS August Classic: Sunday

Saturday night I slept slightly better than Friday night (but only slightly), so the earlier wake up call on Sunday wasn't too bad. I watched our early rider, then took Ruby out for a few minutes of grazing before it got super hot. 

She got braided early, just to make sure she was ready. 

Should have brushed the shavings off her before I took her out lol. 

Model status <3 

Spent a lot of time just hanging in front of her stall. 

Wore my galaxy leggings over the whites/boots again and everyone commented on them, haha. 

Drinking between tests -- good girl! She took care of herself so well at the show in the heat. 

Supremely over my shit, again haha. More firsts in one horse classes, again, don't get excited. 

All photos below from Bethany P Photography and used with purchase. 

I am a little bummed this was the only photo from our first test -- where we finally snagged a score towards my bronze! 61 and change. Back in the barn after I had literally refreshed scores and they weren't up and then like 60 seconds later my friend messaged me that we got a 61 and I screamed ♥️

And then our final ride was in the big ring - we were the last ride of the day in there, and I ended up going quite a bit early to let the show finish ahead of schedule. We were already pretty warmed up from our first ride, and honestly a longer warm up wasn't going to do much besides tire both of us out. 

X halt salute, but make it sassy. 

This ride actually scores like identical (to the third decimal place 🤣) as the first-two test from the day before under the exact same judge, so we were nothing if not consistent hahaha. I cried again walking out because I was just so damn proud of us for DOING THE THING and for my brain to be at least MARGINALLY functional. 

TrainerB even commented during my warm up and then later that I seemed far calmer this show, so I'm glad the work on the mental game is paying off a little -- still SO much more to work on but I'll take the baby steps right now! And over the winter, plenty of homework so hopefully next year we can focus more on the showing and less on the surviving 😁