and yet she persisted

With all the customization and ‘personalization’ of literally everything on the internet these days, I never really know if I’m seeing the same “news” as everybody else… To be honest, sometimes I think my google news feed is just like, “wow you check your weather app a lot, seems like you are into weather, let’s fill your ENTIRE FEED with headlines about weather!”

i spy three horse butts, none of them red. doozy, where are you??

Which. Like. No, google news feed. No, that’s literally what the app is for. I check the weather app to see what I need to see about weather, I’m not just generally curious about it LOL… But here we are, in a brave new era of the stupid internet.  

ooooh, there you are! Lil Ms Mafiosa likes to always face the entry way LOL, and it’s no coincidence that all the rest of the horses are crowded onto the opposite side of the hay ring haha 

Or maybe I’m wrong, maybe everybody is in the same boat. Which means that even if you weren’t in the path of this last weekend’s most recent storm, perhaps you heard about it anyway. 

outdoor ring almost entirely clear of snow on saturday, the day we went to loch moy!!

Fortunately, while areas north of Maryland — particularly up thru New York and into New England — got slammed by the recent nor’easter, we just got a respectable new snow layer that was quickly and easily cleared from the roads. No state of emergency, and no unending weeks of arctic blasts. Just normal snow. Fine!

then….. monday, blargh

After last month’s extravaganza, this barely merited a shrug haha! Well… except from the horses, who need no special invitation to be a little extra lol… I swear they know when a big system is blowing in, bc basically the whole farm was up in a tizzy! Gotta love it!

storm blew in with a lot of rain to start, and the horses were all a bit cray cray. 
here’s doozy just breakin dem’ boys hearts!

Anyway, tho, the storm hit overnight Sunday, was mostly cleared up by midday Monday, and by Tuesday we were off again to our now bi-weekly lessons** with dressage trainer C!!

(**At least that’s the plan haha, y’all know how it goes… But we actually have a standing day + time now for the first time ever, so maybe it’ll stick!)

nonchalantly trying to act like the whole lot of them *didn’t* just bolt up the hill behind me haha
i’m calling shenanigans!

And I tried to remember to take a lot of pictures in order to force myself to write about it… since the writing helps really cement the experience into my memories, but the photos are what really drive the writing. You know how it is.

anyway. onto the lesson!

This winter has probably been the most consistent era for seeing trainer C in years. Even so, tho, it’s still been a bit inconsistent just bc of the weather. Like, we missed a lesson last month bc of the big storm, and honestly with all the ups and downs anyway it’s always even odds whether Doozy has been working regularly leading up to the lesson. Which means it’s a bit of a gamble what horse shows up haha!

i always feel a little unworthy of being the first to leave tracks in this incredible ring…

We’ve been super productive the last couple weeks tho, so Doozy showed up ready to shine this week, yay! Well. Ok haha, let’s temper that a little bit. Bc she still is who she is. There’s often another horse schooling in the ring at the same time as my lesson, which is totally fine, tho naturally Doozy is often distracted.

random unrelated shot of us from home, only related in that — hey, it’s me on a horse!

Plus, this week we also had the manure spreader out in the cornfield above the ring doing its thing. Except, with the ~23*F temps, “doing its thing” happened to also involve putting off so much steam from the warm manure that you’d have thought the whole thing was on fire. Which, naturally, Doozy did think LOL.

back at the dressage barn again… doozy thinks she’d rather just move in and live there rather than go back into the cold wind

Much like our lesson with Dan last week, it was therefore a persistent issue throughout the ride of trying to keep Doozy’s attention, to keep backing her off the ledge of wanting to lose her shit.

handsome mare <3 i’m always trying to recreate one of my favorite shots of charlie thru these doorways

And I’m proud to say that we were successful! Like, sure, she had a couple moments here and there — especially the first time the steaming spreader passed close to the windows just as we turned our back to it. She had a fairly big spook into canter at that moment… But like, fine, right? Seems to me like a reasonably normal thing to spook at. What mattered is that she recovered, and then kept a lid on it (tho also kept an eye on that spreader) afterward. We’ll take it!

ugh. mare. c’mon, open your eyes!!

A really big difference maker in this ride, I think, was remembering what Dan said about my tendency to really move around a lot in the saddle, to kinda swing side to side with the movement of Doozy’s stride. He was adamant that I sit still and firm in *one* spot, to let Doozy come to me. And go figure, he was right.

look at the camera!! doozy!!

It really made a difference helping Doozy stay with me when she felt distracted or worried, but it also made a HUGE difference when we practiced our leg yields, which trainer C had us doing almost the whole ride. She started us off in walking leg yields, quarter line to rail, and then right away had us doing them in trot too.

sigh. the original, there can only be one <3

She set us off on a nice little pattern, too. Riding leg yield quarter line to rail, then immediately onto a 15m circle, which naturally lands you back on the quarter line to repeat again. And she also had us leg yielding from rail to quarter line, and again with the 15m circle to immediately rinse repeat again. For all of Doozy’s hemming and hawing, she was shockingly good for this!

you’ll do, tho, sweet biscuit <3

We did a similar pattern in canter, too — cantering a 15m circle, turn up the quarter line, transition to trot, leg yield to wall. Rinse repeat, or change directions etc. A very pleasant little exercise that I think we’ll adopt as it’s just enough to keep Doozy occupied and busy, while still requiring we be connected and on the aids quickly — but not quite so intense an exercise as to get the horse feeling stressed or anticipatory.

grateful to have this silly critter in my life!

And maybe a nice addition to the next edition of the Brit Bot, assuming that gets resurrected once we’re back to riding out in more open spaces again. (And Kat I promise I haven’t forgotten about your tests either!!)

So overall a nicely productive session — mainly in that it was yet another ride rife with #distractions and #feelings but yet we persisted and got on with it and (eventually) overcame haha. The real trick will be making that happen in the chaos of a warm up ring when I may or may not have step by step instruction… But that eventuality is still a ways off, so for now we’re satisfied enough!