New horses and ponies galore!

In less than a week, I've ridden two new-to-me horses, and had really good rides on both!  One, Glory, is a Paint mare owned by another client at the barn who's working with my trainer.  She's definitely a mare, but has the best sitting trot ever.  Had a good first ride on her on Friday, even though I hope to never ride in her saddle again.  My but was seriously sore for days, it managed to get me at all the wrong angles.  Today I rode Ole, my trainer's new Haflinger pony.  He was so much fun, we even trotted over some poles, did some baby leg yields, and walked a little bit on the road by the end of the ride.  He exudes something similar to Indy personality-wise, totally trustworthy and a horse I would like to be around a lot more.  Plus we finally get a horse who likes to be fussed over!  A really good horse week.

Caveletti and Adjustability

In my lesson on Wednesday, we did more trotting poles, eventually turning them into cavelettis with one side of the pole slightly raised with a block.  Indy really had to use his stifles to think about going up for the raised pole, which was harder for him.  I had to work to get his trot both slow and animated, posting lower yet stronger really helped me do that even though it initially was hard to post low with such a bumpy trot!  It's surprising how adjustable Indy is, because on first glance it appears that he has good gaits that are very consistent but don't look like they'd be easy to adjust.  But he's really responsive, so it's easier than it looks.  It was a really good lesson.

They just know, sometimes...

Had a really bad day but a really wonderful lesson today.  Got on completely miserable, but somehow over the course of the ride I began to feel a bit better (at least for a few minutes).  Indy is so wonderful for rides like this, he's really quite happy going around basically on the buckle and does just about everything right.  We trotted him over some poles today, which I haven't done literally in years (the last few horses I've ridden I have not jumped or done any pole work with).  It was fun, I could really feel Indy's stifles pop up when he really got moving over the poles and picking his feet up.  He really seemed to enjoy this new exercise, really pepping up but not in a bad way.  Another interesting exercise Mia had me do after she was satisfied with the pole work was changing my diagonal on the up beat instead of sitting into it - with his very, very bouncy trot it does help to do that!  I just have to remember to do that, changing on the down beat is so automatic now. 

I swear Indy knew I needed a really good lesson today and was happy to oblige!  But really he's just an all-around good boy who tries his best.