Ride Today

Today was a good day all around. I saw my dad for a bit and he took some good pictures and videos of me riding. It's always good to see yourself riding, I always find the image in my head is totally different from what is actually happening. Sometimes it is good, and sometimes not. From the videos I saw I need to keep my hands down and more steady. That would probably help Dru more too, seeing how his head needs to be down, and more steady. There were a few lessons going on throughout my ride, which just makes everything confusing, that is one thing I miss about Breezy, you pretty much always had the arena to yourself. Luckily Robyn has a bigger indoor, and a nice outdoor when all of this darn snow finally melts!

So I got to the barn and took my time brushing him and playing around with him. I was trying to avoid the lessons, but it was inevitable. When I finally sucked it up and went in I was pleased when Dru immediately put his head down and moseyed around the arena. A month ago that would not have been possible, it took the whole ride for us to be relaxed, with his head down and me trusting him enough to give it to him. We worked on getting his head down, again. In my defense he has a very large neck that is not easy to maneuver. In an attempt to correct my outside reign issue I was leg yielding him in a circle trying to get him to come to it. It's helpful, but ultimately I just need to keep it steady. I gave him a short break and then did some stretchy trot and canter, along with working on collection. At the end I would have normally given him a short break, and then done a test, but he's always mad when he thinks he's done and I make him do a test, so I skipped the break and went straight for the test. I always feel like our ride gets really good and we've made progress, and then the test just stinks. This helped a little. We're working on training 2. It was somewhat difficult dodging horses and Robyn, but we survived! Our center line ended up on the quarter line, but the halt was nice! To cool him out I took him down the drive way, quite the experience. Going towards the road he is fine, but going towards Robyn's house.. forget it. We do circles and circles, and more circles, and when he finally realizes we're up the drive way, there is no way he's sticking around! I think it's kind of funny, but I'm not sure he agrees :)

On a side note... I got my show clothes and am super excited for my first show!!
On another side note... I came to the conclusion that everything I'm telling Dru to do I need to do in my life. I'm a very big hypocrite!