This morning was more than a little bit nuts, doing turnout for 11 horses at one barn before loading up at another to hit the highway at 7 and head to Debbie's. It snowed most of the way down, no big deal because I had my Dave Matthews groove on and my mom in the passenger seat, and it was a pretty uneventful drive until we arrived, I stepped out of the truck, and promptly fell down. Aly was fine to unload (she has 4 studs in each shoe, of course) but Neil stepped off the trailer and promptly moved his legs in a variety of directions I did not know he was capable of (now I have full confidence that he can handle any lateral movement through at least Intermediare II). Luckily he was wearing his shipping helmet or 'idiot hat' as we call it, and boots, and never actually fell all the way down. A variety of solutions were considered but eventually we put him back on the trailer and backed the trailer up to the barn door, and unloaded him onto a rubber mat- Sheila and the Debbies were fantastic helping us with sand and moving the trailer on the ice.
Ponies got their feet done, met Kathy Shultz's new horse Ray- he's super cute, had an awesome and very educational lesson in which I learned:
1. I need to educate my horse before I ride him like he's an educated horse.
2. A better way to use my seat to help him swing from my seat and over his back and topline instead of curling up in front away from the bridle- speaking of which, a change in bit and bridle are in order as I suspected. Debbie said something fatter and french-linked would be good for him, a KK or something like that. She must know how much I love to play with bits. The mouthpiece on the D is too thin, it's something I used to jump Aly in. Follow along for weeks of bitting adventures.
3. Sometimes, it's okay to ride in a less-than-Pony-Club-standard position to accomplish something as a trainer. This makes a lot of sense: obviously my weight needs to go in some places outside the range of basic balanced position to help my horse understand what I am asking of him, like loading the opposite front shoulder when I ask for a turn on the forehand, being looser everywhere generally.
I will post some video if my computer cooperates- the luxury of a heated barn and indoor are quite nice when it's 15 degrees out, but as Amy keeps reminding me, it's only 5 weeks til April (yikes!). As an added note, eventers are awesome: someone whose name I did not catch got her horse trailer stuck at the very top of the driveway (did I maybe mention how icy it was) and like 5 people were there from the barn helping try to get her unstuck, a random guy with a blue van (random guys are awesome too) stopped on the side of the road to help because he had a couple of buckets of sand in his car, and finally Scott went and got his truck from next door and pulled her into the road. I was quite proud of Devon the Chevy (my truck) for making it into the road all by herself.
Stay warm everyone!
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