Corralling the crazy

I got to ride with people over the weekend, I went to the barn during the day and 2 other boarders showed up.  YAY!!! I love riding with others, I really miss it and it so rarely happens.  Almost exclusively on weekends and it seems it is every other weekend.  There are a total of 6 boarders and 2 owners at the barn but I only see the 2 owners occasionally and only 2 of the boarders with any normalcy.  On Saturday, I tacked up and tried warming Mia up but she was lit up instead.  She had way too much energy to focus and was taking any excuse to spook.  Trailer outside being parked?  Spook.  Someone dropping a brush in the aisle?  Spook.  After almost 10 minutes of trying to get any  kind of work out of her, I hopped down and put her on the lunge line.

She was a freak and galloped around for a long time.  But at least I got to see some of her big trot, now imagine that packaged up a little better, boing!  After she cantered around for 10 minutes, she voluntarily walked so I hopped on and she was so much better.  Much more relaxed and willing to listen.  Phew!  Mia was nicely forward but not super rushy and was responsive to my lateral requests.  I had to convince the other boarder that I had power steering and brakes, she could ride down with me, I think she is a nervous rider but she came down and we rode nicely together.  We then showed off some of our lateral movements and even threw in a 5 meter canter circle!

On Sunday I rode in the jump saddle to test out the padding request by the saddle fitter, Mia did not like it at all.  She was very short and choppy in her shoulders and jumped very awkwardly over the little 2'3" jump.  I hopped down and took the pad off and she immediately moved forward much better, much more free in the shoulder.   Apparently adding a few shims in the front of a Mattes pad made the saddle fit unpleasant for her.  The saddle does need lifted up, I am going to try just the pad next time and see how well it works.  

We rode around a bit, getting Mia responsive before we jumped.  We jumped and Mia was only gallopy once.  We jumped a half dozen times before calling it a day.  When I hopped down, I peeked at the standards to see what height we were at.  Opps, it was at 3 foot??  The jump was set on 5 foot standards and it made the jump look so dang small!  3 foot was so easy for her and it looked small, wow!  I guess next time we have to go higher.

This week was a refocus on dressage to get ready for our tentative lesson on Saturday.  Lots of lateral work, which is coming along wonderfully, and consistency.  She is now moving her haunches in/out on command and is doing a SI like a badass.  Last night we even rode through BN A, BN B and N A tests.  The BN A/B tests were fabulous, I think we would place highly if we had our show right now!  She certainly isn't second/third level in dressage but I think we are on our way and in a few months, we will be close.  Our Novice test actually rode quite well as well, the weakest point is keeping her consistent in the bridle through all of the trot work.  I rode that test twice and she was great until different points in her trot, she would get heavy and rushing.  But when I corrected her, she was good for the remainder of the test.  I need to download N B so I can work on that test next as well, it has corners, and I think even the training level tests so I have something harder to work on.

I am really looking forward to our lesson on Saturday, I think we are actually ready for it.  I think we will be tired at the end of it, but I think we are both fit enough for a dressage lesson in the middle of January where it is cold.  Fingers crossed, one last ride tonight in prep for the lesson. Hopefully the ton of ice we got last night/this am is gone enough to make it there tonight.