Day 05- Your first fall
Honestly? I have no idea. It was probably off of Sprinkles, though, since I fell off of him all the time.
In other news, Dee has been in an absolutely RAGING heat for the past few days. I didn't even go up yesterday because she was such a hormonal mess on Thursday. Today, she was still in heat, but it turned out to be a good ride. When I first got on, I had very low hopes for the day. When she is in heat, she will not yield to pressure. Instead, she smashes into it as hard as she can. Usually, however, she's not quite so bad under saddle. But today when I got on and started walking her around, I asked her to move off of my right leg just a little and she responded by sticking her tail straight into the air, curling into a "c" shape, and smashing through my right leg. So I thought, ok, I'll give her a swift kick to get her off that leg, and we'll be fine. No. Wrong. The harder I kicked, the more she leaned right. I even took my foot out of the stirrup at one point and laid the hardest kick that I could on her, because Hey! Listen when I'm talking to you! but it made absolutely no difference to her. When it became clear to me that nothing I could do was going to fix it at that point (I haven't been riding with a whip, because she hasn't needed one, and I didn't feel like getting off to hunt one down, but I wonder if even that would work), I just asked for trot. Even that was a bit sticky, and it took a few boots to get her chugging, but once she was in trot, I just sent her forward forward forward. She wanted to be distracted and spooky, but the more I asked her to just go forward and circle, change direction, etc, the better she got. Want to throw your head in the air like a giraffe and shake it up and down? Fine, but go forward while you do it. Eventually she just settled in and started loosening through her back. She even started moving off of the leg when asked. I then asked for some canter, semi-expecting her to be stiff and horrible. Instead, I got the best canter work that I've had in awhile. The transitions were quiet and respectable, and the canter itself was balanced and forward. She was even taking half halts and moving off of the leg when asked. I was so pleased that I went back to trot, did a bit of stretchy work, and let her quit. Mares in heat... you never do know what you'll get, do you?
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