Freestyle

Freestyle

First canter on River

Posted on April 18, 2015 by horsegirlonajourney

In a recent lesson, Erin really helped me find my “center” at the trot, by having me lean way forward (and post) and then lean way back (and post) and then be “in the middle” — and I could feel the difference in River’s body when I was in the right place. By putting myself in the wrong place, I was able to find and maintain the right place. Which, as it turns out, is where I’ve been most of the time, for the past couple of months.

By the end of the lesson, I felt so in tune with River, and so happy, and her happiness, that it just felt right to try a canter. I visualized us lifting into the canter at a barrel and then cantering together… which happened! But I hadn’t visualized us going smoothly around the corner, and I hadn’t remembered that I could trust River to steer herself around the corner, and I felt River visualizing going to the rail and stopping rather suddenly. So I looked up and sat down and did that.

And Scott — all unbeknownst to me! — got it on video.

Categories: Feel, Freestyle, Lessons, River | Tags: horseback riding, parelli natural horsemanship | 1 Comment

How am I doing with my Healthmanship? The data is in!

Posted on March 16, 2015 by horsegirlonajourney

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%

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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.)