it can only good happen

Happy Friday, y’all! It’s been a quiet week around here. Not… uh, entirely intentionally, tho. I managed to mysteriously tweak an abductor, or at least, that’s what I think it is?

have continued to ride occasionally in the little paddock, sometimes with friends!

Some years ago, pre-Charles but post-Isabel, I was trying to keep my riding momentum going thru sheer willpower alone, and fell off a *bunch* of horses along the way. One of which was former coach Dan’s 2* horse Lion, easily the most schooled horse I’ve ever jumped. 

have sometimes been relegated to the big indoor, tho — also sometimes with friends!

The result was a significant strain on the adductor (I think), and it was omg so awful. Lifting the leg was a challenge, sleeping was a nightmare — as a somewhat restless sleeper, I learned through this injury that there is apparently a muscle that works to hold your limbs horizontal when you roll from side to side. And this injury made that legit excruciating. 

and who can resist a bounce just sitting there like that?

What I’ve got going on right now feels like the same general area of muscling, but maybe the opposite job. Stairs are fine, standing around is fine, but every now and again — esp in a moment of rotation on the leg, or swinging the leg away from the body — oof. Nobody likes that. 

had another lesson at fmf. doozy thought this pole arrangement was 100% natural and normal, good girl

Thankfully tho this go round seems to just be some sort of random tweak. Like, I don’t even really know what caused it, just that I woke up fine one day, then throughout the day became progressively more sore, and by evening all my attempts to power through it failed me and I was legit not even able to post the trot. 

continuing to jump actual jumps in these lessons, hurray!
for the curious — that’s trot poles to a one stride grid of X’s, i forgot to ask the distance

Which… Was a bummer. As I previously mentioned, I made a hyper-personalized version of my new exciting ‘recorded ride guide’ fixation specifically for practicing the Starter test. I call it hyper-personalized bc it’s literally based off the timing of our videos of riding this test, and the coaching I need ‘in the moment.’ 

I’m very excited to give this recording a trial run too, and even measured out a practice court in our small indoor, which it turns out is exactly 30x40m, perfect!!

at home, trying to match the drama of the skies

Riding to the recordings continues to go well. I remember once hearing advice on how to make a decision on whether to move on from a horse or not — they said after every ride for a month, you should mark you calendar with either a Green checkmark, or a Red X. Then, at the end of the month, review.

was another great session using our new ride guides!

And I never forgot that advice, not because I’m wondering about moving on from Doozy or whatever, but bc it was such a simplistic and honest framing. Yes or no? Good or bad? Were you happy with that, or no? And ever since, I’ve sought to find ways to ensure that we’re always having more ‘Green Checks’ than ‘Red X’s,’ if you know what I mean.

“ma’am, pls to see that sky of impending doom, tho?? let’s gtfo pls!” — doozy, 100%

These recorded ride guides are 3 for 3 on Green Checks, tho. And not bc Doozy remembered to take her princess pills, either. In fact, on our last ride (before *my* mysterious lameness), Doozy was actually a bit of a hot mess. 

A new horse had arrived and the new barn mate was (extremely reasonably) rolling trunks into the barn while we walked up to the ring and Doozy legit flagged her fucking tail omfg, mare. She’s such a funny horse, she HUMS when she’s losing it, and I was like, c’mon pls just cope? Pls??

turns out the little indoor is exactly 40m in length! i had a whole plan to video our test practice, but alas, was too crippled to ride.* will try again next week!
(*probably should have taken the hint when putting on boots proved too painful lol)

AND SHE TOTALLY DID!! Like, not right away, tho she clearly was trying — bless her. There were definitely a few moments in the ride when I could have gotten baited into following her down into the doom loop of chaos. But… The recording was there, with its steady unfeeling AI Brit accent with literally no intonation whatsoever, to just keep us going. 

And holy shit balls — it was GREAT!! Including that new little inserted canter / trot snowman transitions exercise I wrote about last time, it was legit exactly what I wanted it to be, yay!

It was undoubtedly victory snatched from the jaws of defeat. Rather than being an ‘expensive’ or ‘costly’ sort of ride, we both walked away feeling a big deposit in the trust bank.

lol i forgot to feed the meter after getting on, sweet mare **reminded** me

Doozy is so uniquely challenging for me. I love the shit out of her — she is an extremely good girl. I’ve said from Day 1, and I’ll say it again today: She colors inside the lines. 

And it’s exciting to see her schooling improve over time. I’m proud of our progress together. But, ya know. The same challenges are still there, right? 

hilariously, this ring is WAY less spooky when it’s filled with literal wagons of hay. silly me, i thought the wagons would be a problem!

She’s probably the ‘slowest boil’ of all the horses I’ve ever got going before…. Tho, real talk. My last season with Charlie —where we were comfortably ensconced at a ‘cruising altitude’ with no upward pressure — was without a doubt a highlight of our time together <3

And I’m trying to keep that lesson from him — perhaps one of the most important that he ever taught me — front and center. It’s so exciting to develop new tools to help keep me and Doozy moving in the right direction. And it’s exciting to feel so excited about a ride, that I’m actually disappointed to have to wait a couple days LOL… 

But ya know. C’est la vie! Tho brace yo’selves bc in a couple days time (hopefully) you should expect a post (w/video!) on actually practicing that test along to the new guide. Much excitement haha. In the meantime, TGIF, ya’ll!