All the snow drama and worrying about my horse that was 54 miles north of me and the fact that my beloved Saints weren't representing made the Super Bowl XLV pretty insignificant to me.
Our intrepid barn owner, AKA the CEO of Torre Vista Farm managed to keep things under control despite the fact that the property was buried under 6 inches of solid ice, her barn worker blew out a tire trying to come into work and her husband had to make a 2.5 hour commute into Dallas to work the entire time! She entertained herself by sending us pictures of frozen poop in the frozen waterers and making us guess which horse...barn humor at its most desperate!
By Saturday, the snow had softened in the warming temperatures sufficiently that boarders were able to caravan up north to bring some civilization to TVF. Consideringall of the horses had been sequestered in their stalls for five days, they were all surprisingly mellow. Something to do wth the open barn windows and sunshine I guess. All of us boarders managed to lunge and ride around each other, no horse was too terribly crazy. There was lots of horse and snow picture taking!
I think that the barn owner secretly installed a TV with the "Up the Levels" videos in Red's stall during snowmageddon. He came out ready to work, except when we trotted through the melting water from the arena roof....I think he confused the melting snow with acid rain. We worked on our long and low walk for a long time to just get him to stretch out. And then on to our leg yielding and trot circles. We did a lot of walking as I didn't really want him to get too jazzed up our first day back.
By Sunday, Red was definately ready to get back to work. He just shoved his head in his halter when I went into his stall. When we went to the arena, I started out again with long and low walk before moving onto leg yielding across the diagonal. On this day, I really wanted him to work on his lengthenings so after making sure he was nicely warmed up at the trot we worked on our trot lengthenings...left lead is fantast big and forward and steady contact...but I am concerned about the left...he seems to want to break into the canter vs loading up the left hind. I will ask Sue about that on Tuesday during our lesson. And then onto Canter lengthenings with a collection of the stride in the corners- I am using a 10m. circle to help collect him. One thing I have noticed is that I tend to brace my seat as I want to collect him and overuse my outside HH...causing him to break in the canter. I need to remember to make the canter motion but making it smaller without tensing up. I tell myself to CANTER more with my seat as I collect him.
Here is an interesting exercise I've been working on with Sue to help me get the accuracy of my 10m circles and have the correct level of energy. In the sitting trot, a 10m. circcle at every letter in both directions. As you are bending in the 10m' circle, I am really having to increase the tempo and then between letters adding a HH and a little shoulder fore to make sure he isn't bracing. I was really prease with how uphill he was in the shoulders with a very steady contact. I just felt like I could sit there and 'ride the wave' so to speak! Towards the end, I decided to work on some stuff in preparation for our Piaffe/Passage clinic that is coming up in three weeks. We've gotten our half steps down. And our Walk to Piaffe down quite well. One thing that I've seen Alfredo do is go from Piaffe right into the trott to use that collecting energy and the quickening of the hind legs to build your energy/sit in the trot. So, I decided to incorporate piaffe in between my 10m trot circles. I like this because I could use the circles to supple/bend him and prevent him from tensing up before I HH and asked for the half steps and then increasing it to piaffe steps more on the spot.
At the canter, it was more of the same...lengthen and collect...but on this day, I decided to work on my counter canter. I don't tend to over work the counter canter because Red is a bit of the counter canter king...he will go and go in counter canter. So I just did some counter canter across the diagonal and through the short side before the trot transitions...and then asking for asking for counter canter from the walk steps on the long side. I was really please with how loose and bendy he was, especially in the transitions where he wants to throw himself out in a giant sprawl!
Needless to say, after such a lovely ride he got cookies, carrots and an extra serving of Stuf Muffins. I made him a hot gatorade toddy for his stall and tucked him in for his nap before dinner. Later on that evening at dinner feeding, he had his nose to the wall taking a nap. "I R TIRED!" is what he seemed to say.
So here is a picture of myself and Red investigating the snow. Don't you just love my gangsa, "one sock up, one sock down"? LOL!
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