It all starts with my lesson on Wednesday night. If I had've written this post last night, I would've told you how proud I was of myself. I managed to keep myself from getting too anxious before my lesson, and then when I got to the barn, I took on a devil-may-care attitude that meant that it didn't matter what Walker did. Unfortunately, I'm not in the same great mood I was last night, so I will only give the cliff notes version. Walker bolted like he always does, but instead of pulling him back and then not letting him pick up any speed again for the rest of the lesson, I just let him canter to wherever he wanted to, and then I just cantered or trotted him back to the spot where he bolted to pick up what we were doing like nothing was wrong. Of course, I've always known that this was the way to deal with Walker, but whenever other people are around, I don't think straight.
There were only two moments that Walker's bolting really bothered me. One time, he bucked while he was bolting and almost kicked one of the other horses. I had to yell, "Watch out", and I ended up ruining the other person's attempt at a pattern. The second time was when he was on one of the other horse's tails. I had a tight grip on the reins, and he was getting agitated. He dropped his head to get behind the bit, I wrenched it up like my instructor kept telling me to do all night, he let out a squeal and then proceeded to do his own personal bucking bronco moves. It was surreal. He's never done anything like that before and I actually even grabbed onto the horn (for whatever peace of mind that gave me). I didn't feel like I was going to fall off or anything, but I was not a fan of the mini temper tantrum.
On the way down to the barn, I was asking my instructor lots of questions about jumping, at which point she said, "You know, Natalie, if you ever want to jump in a lesson, just throw on your English tack and we can do that." I was really excited because I have been waiting a long time to get the green light from her to jump. She has strict requirements about what someone has to be able to do before she will teach them to jump, so I was flattered and thrilled that I finally qualified. Now, three out of four of us ride English in our lesson (or at least I intend to switch over during Winter), so I suggested (and my instructor agreed), that we should make that our little Winter project.
Wednesday = Success.
Then today my class was cancelled and I was able to devote some time this morning to working on a midterm. As I've mentioned before, I'm swamped with my school work these days, and I will have very little time this weekend to go to the barn. So I was happy that I could get some work done this morning. About 10 minutes before I had to go school, someone buzzed me from the front door. And it turned out to be my bridle! Never was there a happier person than me this morning as I gingerly felt the nice leather and BEAUTIFUL soft grip rubber reins. Believe me, it took every ounce of energy I had to force myself to go to class after that arrived!
The bridle before I put it together - the picture doesn't do it justice
When my class was done, I excitedly ran home, put the bridle together and hopped in the car to go to the barn. This is the descent part of the roller coaster (in case you're keeping track).
I arrive at the barn and there is a random giant dog wandering around the yard. He didn't look particularly mean, but he was not you're friendly golden retriever type. He was more like a rottweiler kind of dog, and I was afraid that if he ran out in the arena while I was riding Walker, he might scare him (or me). So I spent the next few minutes trying to shoo him away from the yard. I eventually succeeded.
I go into the barn and I'm subsequently greeted by a horse... wandering the halls. She has dropkicked opened her door, breaking the latch and god knows how long she was just wandering around the yard. Because her door was broken, I had to put her in another stall, but I knew that this was only a temporary fix since we barely have enough stalls for all the horses we have already. I tried calling up to my barn owner but I got no answer.
Up I went next to the outdoor arena where I wanted to set up my crossrail. I was so excited all week because I decided that today was the day that Walker and I were going to canter it. I had been dreaming about it for days. When I got to the outdoor arena, however, the foal and one of the ponies was out there. Sometimes horses get turned out in the arenas when their paddocks are a mess, which I find very annoying for this particular reason. I grabbed a lead line, and proceeded to spend 20 minutes trying to catch them. The pony is extremely bad, and the foal is just recently weaned so that means that when the pony was galloping (and I do mean galloping) around the arena at top speed, the foal was chasing after him to stay as close as possible. When I FINALLY managed to catch the pony (who tried to bolt out of the gate when I opened it), the foal started to freak out. He didn`t want to be left alone, and he almost broke his leg trying to crawl through the fence after the pony. Obviously I knew this wouldn`t do, and I also knew that I couldn`t lead them both at the same time (bad foal; recently weaned pony - one of either side of me).
So that was the end of the outdoor arena, and subsequently my cantering of a crossrail as there is not enough room in the indoor for that. At this point, my rollercoaster is in steady decline, and to add to the situation, I had wasted a lot of time dealing with all of this. On Thursdays after class, I barely have a window of an hour to ride, and usually end up only riding for a half hour before the girl who feeds arrives and starts bringing in the horses.
Tacking up Walker usually takes no time, but because the bridle was brand new, I spent another 10 minutes trying to adjust it (including the tight buckles). By the time I even got into the indoor arena, the girl had already arrived to start feeding (which inevitably meant a distracted horse).
But I started riding and videotaping my ride. Now the exercise that I had wanted to do for quiet hands was to strap my hands to the saddle. I know this sounds crazy but I read online that you can attach elastics to the d-rings on the English saddle and put your wrists through them. This way, your hands have enough flexibility to move, but you feel the pull every time your hands go a little crazy. I wanted to videotape my ride because I wanted to see how much of a difference it made for me.
The cherry on top of this lovely day was that Walker decided to be bad as well. Mind you, he wasn`t any more bad than usual in the indoor arena; it`s just that I had already had such a hard time up until this moment, my time was running out, and I knew that I wouldn`t make it back to the barn again until Saturday (hopefully!). He was doing all his crazy indoor cantering tricks - running into corners, trying to turn instead of canter, and also cantering on the wrong lead on his good side. This is my new frantic corner-esque annoyance. It drives me crazy because it`s his good lead for god`s sake! I`d understand if he was picking up his good lead on his bad side. I could almost justify it. But he`s picking up his bad lead on his good side! And either it`s a disaster, or else he will simply counter canter the entire arena. Once again, I couldn`t once get him to pick up the correct lead on that side (a problem that I clearly need to work on in a maximum of three weeks before we get stuck in there for 6-7 months).
Because he was also distracted by the horses getting fed, by the end of it, he wouldn`t even canter at all, and we were getting into some major battles. I was kicking the bejesus out of him, turning him in little circles, forcing him to back up, etc. I was so angry, and I know that I was aggressive with him (hopefully not overly so, but I wouldn`t put it past myself...). To make matters worse (or yes, they can always be worse), I stupidly changed his bit when I put together his new bridle. I have been curious what he would be like in a simple d-ring snaffle bit, even though when we first got him, we immediately concluded that it was a horrible bit for such a strong horse. Lately, I`ve gotten much stronger though, and I thought that if I switched to the gentler bit, especially when we move indoors for the Winter, I might be able to soften us both up a little bit. I haven`t completely given up on the idea of the bit yet, but it was definitely a disaster of an idea for today.
Walker`s new bit - fool that I am
So now, despite the fact that I was pretty much bouncing off the walls when my new bridle arrived, I`m quite deflated about my entire ride - my entire day at the barn (all one hour and a half of it). And of course, my camera didn`t work so it didn`t videotape more than a few minutes of my ride.
Walker modelling the new bridle - bad quality photo, but it does look nice on him
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