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!