Clinic and Riding Outside the Arena

Last week I audited a groundwork clinic by Charles Wilhelm at Xenophon, where I volunteer.  It was free and what I found most useful about it was actually just that it reinforced a lot of what Mia has been teaching me - horses respecting your personal space, demanding obedience but not in an overbearing way, the idea of moving away from pressure as a good thing.  He got even the obnoxious Haflinger to ground tie! That was impressive, even coming from him.  He advocated bridling the over-the-head way that I've started doing, and reminded us to be careful unbridling - I really have to remember that! Embarrassingly enough, I don't know if I have ever really considered it.

He explained everything in such great terms that I was really kind of inspired to take up more serious ground work sometime... I don't know when, though, since Radar isn't exactly the easiest horse to do ground work with since he is so dull!  Had a nice little walk around on the roads on Friday, although I didn't put spurs on and paid for it! Thankfully Mia made me go back and grab a whip.  I love all the people complaining about how fresh their horses are on the trail and I still have to wake mine up!  Which is good because I'm a chicken outside of the arena, it's pathetic.  But because he's so darn slow I actually trotted up the road on him and felt confident... haven't done that in forever.

There are three possible horses coming into the barn that I would possibly be riding.  Kind of exciting, but between my general life craziness (was supposed to be in NYC today, cancelled because of the hurricane, etc. etc.) I can't really get that worked up about them.  It would be sad to be all happy and end up leaving after all!

So what discipline do I do, again?

Friday I rode in a western saddle for the first time in forever.  Today I rode in the jumping saddle and popped over a few x's (my first attempt at "jumping" in 5 years!)... all this a) on a Fjord and b) at a "dressage" barn!  I think the fact that I had so much fun doing both of these things really reaffirms to me that my main goal riding will always be to have fun doing whatever the heck I'm doing at that specific time.  No need to pigeonhole myself into one discipline or another.

Ended up riding Radar in the western saddle last week basically because I was curious.  The saddle's owner had finally punched another hole into the stirrups so it was more feasible to ride in, still a bit too long but manageable.  Had a lot of fun just playing around with applying all the Mary Wanless techniques to a saddle that at first feels very different (where are my seat bones here?)  Radar doesn't care what kind of saddle you're in, so we were all good.

Today we worked on getting him nice and in front of my leg... which honestly on him feels a little racy just because he's so naturally not forward and has an insanely short stride!  Mia decided to put up a tiny cross rail and we popped over it a few times, forgot how much fun jumping a bit is!  I have no desire to jump large fences but tiny stuff is fun.  It's hilarious on him with his short neck, you release and you're nearly at his ears! And I'm short - I can only imagine how much more awkward it would feel if you were taller.  But he was perfect and seemed rather happy with the turn the lesson took (anthropomorphizing, but I think I can tell when he's content). 

I'm glad he's in a good place physically and mentally right now, loosing Indy has been a lot easier because he's so much fun right now.