Jitter Bug

I was a nervous wreck tonight riding Walker for the first time in three months.  I was literally shaking like a leaf.  At first I thought I was afraid for some unknown reason, but then I realized it was just a combination of my nerves wanting everything to go right, my excitement to be back in the saddle, and my apprehension that my barn owner was at the barn and might see me at my worst!

It's funny how long and how short three months can feel.  When I got in the saddle, my first thought was, "Wow.  I'm awful high off the ground."  Which is absolutely absurd on my 15.3 hand horse, but the only horses I rode over the last three months were all in the 14 hand region.

I have to admit that I had some pretty lofty aspirations for our ride, despite only being allowed to jog for a total of 5 minutes.  With all my new Jane Savoie knowledge crammed in my mind, my internal dialogue went a lot like: "Watch me rock this!  We'll be doing flying lead changes and all sorts of crazy fancy things in no time!  Stand back and watch me put this horse on the bit!"

And then Walker decided to be Walker.

"I think I liked you better when you
just gave me treats and cuddles all day"

I guess I should be happy that he wasn't fresh or wild.  Many people will say "better lazy than crazy".  Those people have never met Walker.  Our ride started out so wonderful and I had him stretching for the bit and all these lovely relaxed reactions at the walk, and then when I dared to ask him to do any work - jog for 10 seconds - he responded with: "Work?  I don't think so."

At the jog/trot, there was a lot of bad behaviour on Walker's behalf and a lot of bad responses on my own.  I'm not quite as upset about the bad behaviour on Walker's behalf.  It was a lot of his old tricks and he was just trying to see if they'd still work.  I had no spurs on, and in fairness to my thick skinned pony, the last time I rode him without spurs was never.  Well, that's not entirely true.  I rode him with no spurs maybe twice when I first got him but then he body checked me into a wall and I quickly stopped that.  I was convinced after reading Dressage 101 that I was going to create a nice, light horse, and he was definitely softer in the mouth than normal but still fussy about the no-spurs thing.

I'm mostly upset about my own reaction.  The minute he started being a jerk, I got irrationally mad, and because I wasn't strong enough in the legs to get him to listen to me, I found myself hanging on his mouth like some city slicker on a trail ride.  I'm so glad my new barn owner didn't walk in on all of that - Walker doing his best to ignore me thumping him with my legs and me waving and ripping wildly like a banshee with a vengeance.

Once I got my brain back, I decided to just go straight to a loose rein or neck rein and try to end on a good note.

Final tally:
Walker 1
Jane Savoie 0