Thursday, August 5, 2010

PLEASE let cooler weather be on the way soon ...




Wow ... I am just melting away, I think! My feel so bad for Tiki; he's such a sweaty horse. We ride for about 10 minutes, and he literally drips sweat. I worry about dehydration, but he gets electrolytes, and drinks plenty of water. His stall is always got lots of wet spots, so I guess I'm not too worried yet.:) At least he DOES sweat ... one of the ponies at Patchwork has anhydrosis, and Janet worries about him like CRAZY.




Well ... last week I could only do the boy twice. I could NOT make myself ride in the extreme heat for a third time:( At the moment, I'm also fighting with guilt, because last week and this week are my son's final 2 weeks before starting the third grade ... which means his (and mine!) final opportunity to do a little bit of sleeping in. If we sleep in until 9 and don't get to the barn around 11, it's already a literal oven, and I have NO desire to do ANY more than I have to.




So anyway, rode yesterday for the first time since Thursday. I've decided to get back in the ring and do some really good flatwork. Tiki needs to really work on maintaining a nice topline, stepping UNDER himself at the trot, clean upward transitions in general, and on his downward transitions, NOT yanking his head down. Nicole actually came up with me, and provided me with a bit of input; he needed a brighter trot all around, and our upward canter transitions from the trot were too "runny". I realized after talking to our third HP rider, Marisa, that the correct dressage test for the Halloween HT is BN test B, NOT BN test A:( Darn it! I really like test, and we'd been practicing! I think what happened is I'd decided on the September HT at Poplar for our first outing, and THERE is the test A. Then I went to the Area III championships at Chatt Hills, and totally changed my mind:) So, I digress ... rode the test after warming up fairly lightly, and made all of the aforementioned mistakes. Sooo ... that gave me homework for today!




Today, I had a GREAT day! My boy felt like a wonderful rockstar. 2 things were different; I used the dressage bridle again, and I had my spurs on. I concentrated on pushing him forward, keeping my leg on and useful, my left wrist straight, and my forearms soft. He felt SO good.:) Very soft, he really held his topline nicely, the trot FELT like he was forward and slow, and we stayed on a 20 m circle pretty much the entire time, so he maintaine a nice inside bend. Concentrated on sitting the trot going into my canter, and that helped a TON. Trotted back and forth thru the 3 cav bounces about 6 times, working on my halt each time. Tiki wants to just yank his head down so hard after doing a downward transition after a jump ... I did it over and over until he halted softly and with his hind end underneath himself. Quit on a good note:) We got some decent rain here, so hopefully the ring will soften up a little bit, and I can jump him some tomorrow.

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