My not-a-resolution this year was to ride every day that I’m home. Here’s how I’m doing, in the 64 days this year so far.
In percentages, here’s how it breaks down:
- Rides (always includes ground time as well) – 45.3%
- Ground time – 23.4%
- Out of town – 31.3%
A ride can be 30 seconds of sitting on River’s back just to claim it as a riding day, but that still totally counts as it practices mounting and dismounting and relaxing and not getting hung up on a number. Most of the time however my rides have been around 5-10 minutes for the first few weeks and 15-20 minutes ever since, with a few longer rides of just walking around the ranch.
On River, I started out bareback, then bareback and bridleless, and now bareback pad with reins. On Rocky, for a while I was getting in a minute or two of cantering (not consecutively), but then Rocky did something to his left shoulder and his left navicular area is a bit tender. He’s on Turnout Rest and Previcox for a couple weeks and then we’ll see what to do for him next.
Here’s why I decided to make this non-resolution this year.
- Develop my riding skills through consistent practice.
- Stop waiting to be [[fit, thin, skilled, deserving, organized, financially sound]] before I live my life and do what I love.
- Prioritize my healthmanship, with a residual effect of having to be more disciplined with work and social commitments, so that prioritizing healthmanship doesn’t cause me to miss deadlines.
- Stop holding myself back out of guilt that Other People, including people I love, don’t have the same opportunities I do.
- Improve my mental and emotional fitness so that I can get back into more regular exercise of many kinds, to improve my physical fitness for the horses.
- Break the cycle of progressing up to being able to post for 3 – 5 consecutive minutes and then Something Happens and I’m grounded for 2 months and have to start over at 5-minute walks. (The Something Happens has usually, historically, been Rocky going lame. But sometimes it’s a business trip or heavy workload or weeks of wet/cold, which we desperately need to have again, or other factors that knock me out of the habit of going out.)
Horsegirl on a Journey 
Love your post , Regina! Way to go with your Nonresolutions!!!
Thanks! I have that 6-inch square Horses calendar with 3/4-inch boxes for each day, and so far I’ve been able to jot down something every day because it doesn’t feel like data entry and doesn’t take as long as crafting a reflection for my blog or journals or whatnot. I’m having fun with notations like “Ri BBP+Reins W/T ptrn” or “Ro UDT” or “Ri BB&BL 5m” 🙂
Hi Regina! Great post and great goals! It’s important to set achievable and measurable goals for yourself and your horsemanship to stay progressive!
Here in Pagosa Springs at the Parelli office there is a group of employees that have made a commitment to ride every week and film something as we each work toward our own Levels and Auditions goals! Having the goals of a new string or or simply achieving a task on the self assessment list has been very motivating!
Keep up the good work!
Samantha-Parelli Central
Thanks, Samantha! For me this has been great on several levels, one of which is that I gave myself “permission” to ride, because riding has always been part of my dream but I kept accidentally waiting until … something … that circle of not wanting my horse to have to deal with my ineptitude but how could I develop aptitude if I didn’t practice?