Equestrian Team Summer - Day 7 (Final day!)

Friday

Today was my final lesson of the summer with Stacy. I thought I'd have the last one next week, but she's going to a regional dressage show with one of her other clients, so the next time I'll have a lesson it'll be with the team!

I think that maybe I needed to fall off. I was being pushed around and walked on like a doormat by these school horses, scared I'd do something wrong, and today's ride was spectacular simply because I had one goal in mind: DON'T FALL OFF AGAIN and did everything to prevent it.

First of all, I finally settled with the idea of correcting them. I feel scared correcting other people's horses because they're not mine, but when it comes between falling off and staying on, it doesn't matter to me anymore if I have to correct them, I'll do it! Also because I was scared of falling off again, my leg contact was phenomenal. To feel that contact and balance and be able to ride with one hand on the reins, one hand on my head, while in a two-point felt awesome.

I did so well today that we started going over jumps again. Having leg contact also made landing the jumps SO MUCH EASIER. I used to tend to forget to have contact over the jump and kind of just let the horse do his thing then try to recover afterwards, but not wanting to fall off has paid off in that aspect too. I did four jumps, and landed 2 of them soundly, with the first one me forgetting to sit the canter instead of stand which I immediately fixed a couple strides into it and the second one coming off on the wrong lead. The last two felt amazing, like I was flying without fear of going over the top.

I was also very strong in getting him into a canter and back into one after he broke into a trot a couple of times. (I was riding Tommy, btw). I feel very confident about moving up. If I don't move up a level this year, at least I feel like I'll place a lot in the shows and be able to move up the jumping for my senior year. By then I feel like I would know enough to jump in small shows if I got my own jumper (unlikely, but still). I just feel bitter about not having this kind of starting point last year with Nell...if I had had Stacy for an instructor last year, I might've been jumping for shows this year. Oh well, I can only move forward!

Equestrian Team Day 13 - Last Lesson of the 09-10 School Year

What an interesting day.
Best news: Our directions from last week work perfectly!! We even found an alternate this week (a happy mistake) by getting off the highway at the wrong point. Excellent! Definitely emailing those to the team next year. I don't know what route they take, but we know for a fact that this one works and is TomTom GPS approved!
Really though, I don't understand why they didn't have directions for a route that worked on the website.

I got to ride my favorite horse today, Cameo. *love* All I could think of while I was riding her was one word:

GLORIOUS!

A fantastic ride. I love the smoothness of her trot and the quickstep in her canter. I'm in love with that horse. I'm also happy to announce that my jumping courses are getting more complex! Ha, and complex meaning I get to jump two jumps instead of one. Last week I jumped two in a row; this week she had me do a little pattern.
Oh Cameo. Wonderful flat horse, but she loves to test what she can get away with on the course. No problem for me. I've lived through Brie, there was no way I was letting this horse get away with anything.
Yeah okay. She refused the first time I wanted to trot over the tiny X jump. So I already had it in my brain to make her go back and do it again multiple times before Nell told me to do that. She was perfect after that. I, on the other hand, didn't get comfortable jumping over with her until the last one, which felt amazing. Note to self: Don't look at the floor! It throws off your balance as you jump!

So as a "present" to us before we left, Nell let us ride an extra horse. Yay! Until I found out I had to ride Jimmy. Oh Jimmy. Remember when I was learning how to use a crop? I used it with Jimmy because he's so damn slow! I tried to go into this being confidant, talked to him as I tacked up telling him that he was not allowed to pull any crap on me while I was riding my final ride there fore the summer. In response he tried to bite me. No worries. I was determined to make this horse trot without kicking him and by simply pressing my heels into his side.

Well I accomplished that! It kind of went downhill from there. It was drizzling and while Jimmy and Kara's horse were fine, the filly in the pasture was extremely happy and started galloping and bucking around. This excited Jimmy. As we trotted past, he jumped up in the air. In my brain, it looked something like this:
I'm sure it was actually a buck. I wouldn't know: I've never been bucked before. Point is, I didn't fall off and wanted to walk back around to try to tell him that bucking in that corner was not acceptable.

Didn't happen. Instead:
I didn't fall off thought! Yessss.
Yeah. I figured at that point that training this old coot to stop bucking at the sight of a filly bucking was not my problem: I wasn't being hired to train, wasn't concerned with training this horse, and wasn't about to risk paralysis for a 20 minute "treat ride". After all, it was such a longer fall than from a Paso Fino. So I just walked the upper, non-pasture half of the arena while Kara rode her horse around quite pleasantly.

I hope I never have to ride Jimmy again. We don't mesh well and I don't think it's worth it for me to deal with a "difficult horse" when in the long run, if I end up doing anything with horses, it'll be as a Paso trainer who will never have to kick my horse unless I'm asking for a death wish. I know how to handle difficult horses. I just wish that Nell would understand that I'm not a complete horse idiot and when I say I train Pasos, I don't mean I sit on them and listen to a trainer telling me what to do. I train them. Straight up.

Summer's so close, I can taste it. Maybe this summer when I get a job, it will go towards a special "Lexa's future Nissan Altima/Ford F-150" fund. If I save from this summer and next summer, I should be able to buy it by junior year when I live off campus. That way I can drive out and visit Brie, Nina, and Harry whenever I want to!

Awards! & Equestrian Team Day 6

First off, let me say:

THANK YOU KYLE FOR THIS AWARD!

I'm so excited! This is the first award I've gotten for this blog (which I didn't even think people actually read, by the way) and it makes me super happy. Now, onto the rules.

Here are the rules!
Rules:

1. Thank the person who gave you this award.
2. Share 7 things about yourself.
3. Pass the award along to 15 bloggers who you have recently discovered and who you think are fantastic!
4. Contact the bloggers you've picked and let them know about the award.

Step 1? check.
Step 2? Here it goes!

1. I love my horses to death! (if you couldn't tell)
2. I hate the favoritism in the show circuit, but I guess it's the same in any sport. You pay your dues.
3. I've been "training" since about 8 months after we bought Brie because that's when Andre we moved from that horrid place that we were at so it was easier for him to get to work. We've pretty much been on our own since!
4. I'm starting to really not trust trainers as much as others do. Not really a bad thing.
5. I feel really bad/upset when I see people who keep training and training their horses and never actually learn how to do anything by themselves. Waste of money.
6. I want to have my own horse farm one day, just for private use probably. I'd just love to see my horses out back in the mornings as I ate breakfast.
7. I want to start to branch out of the Paso world!

Step 3? Okay, I definitely don't have 15 horse blogs I follow, so let's see who I come up with.

• Suzie and Echo @ Diary of a Young Horse
  
• SillyPony @ Diary of the Overanxious Horse Owner
• Sianc18 @ Riding and Training a Young Horse
• Michelle @ Michelle's Blog

I absolutely adore all of you and can't tell you enough how much I look forward to reading your posts. =]


Step 4? I'll do that after I post.

Now! Onto the real post!

Now I know I haven't been updating about my adventures on the Equestrian Team. I haven't posted for like a month about this. But I was so excited today that I just had to tell the world!
Basically for the past 4 lessons I've been getting my diagonals easily confused (I can't help it! I just can't see it and can't feel it for that matter). So I get a little bummed out after lessons. Especially after last week on an especially bumpy and difficult *ahemCROPcough* ride on Jimmy so I wasn't to thrilled about sharing that. But then this week =] Oh this week. Today as a matter of fact, I had a very good ride. I cantered around a bunch of times and it felt fantastic! I definitely built up my confidence in staying on a humongous horse (compared to a Paso!) while cantering around. Even better? Our instructor, Nell, promised me that if I'm that good cantering on a couple more horses I'll start jumping!

*happy dance*

I can't wait! If I get the next three months of school we have left with jumping and then the entire summer with my mom's friend? I'll be super ready to kick butt at shows in the fall.
And guess what? I'm also making friends =] with girls on top of that! I pretty much don't get along with girls at all, so I'm super happy to be making friends with them, it's nice. Today was such a good day, and now I can't wait for Saturday and Sunday to start FINALLY working with Nina, because I pretty much have been banned from riding her since she began under saddle *glareTRAINERglare* and then I'm also really eager to work more on increasing Harry's flexibility and overall making Brie happy. I'm a little bummed it's going to be cold this weekend, I was hoping that this warm weather would carry over and I could ride outside.. =/ But we'll make it work.