Practice, practice

What a lovely mare face

Rori and I braved the snow and ice last night and were well rewarded with a great ride. Her pasture gate was snowed in so I had to jump and stomp to break through the crust of snow and flatten it for enough clearance to swing open; I kept an eye on Rori to make sure my hopping around like some angry crazy person on the end of the lead line wasn’t completely freaking her out….NBD, cool as can be. 

We first worked on standing still while mounting up. Miss Aurora walked off on me the last ride so this was something I made a point of tackling this time around. A few tries and 5 minutes later, we got it and for the final test she stood stock still as I “messily” clambered/mounted up. After a nice warm up in the indoor, we did a good solid 15 minutes of trotting with walk breaks in between and finished off the night with groundwork basics. Little improvements here and there- I’m doing much better with my diagonals and transitions. There were certain points during the trotting session that I felt more in tune with Rori than ever before- like her legs were mine sort of deal, it was an amazing feeling.

So far this half-lease setup has been working out well. I think the day/days in between rides give me time to think and reflect while letting my body recoup from the new routine (…I’ve been more fit in the past). I haven’t been around in the equestrian world for very long (3 months to be exact) but I know horse people being the passionate bunch that we are, can have huge differences in opinion about lots of things but good riding is good riding. Doing this practice ride video thing is really helping me see what things look like from the ground and find things to slowly improve and work on during our upcoming rides.