Sunday, May 24, 2009

Having a lesson today with Cleon. Rode in my dressage saddle. In hind site it was a very good choice but more of that later. It was early evening when we started. M went first and during her break it was Josie and mine's turn. I had a rough start. I don't know why but I was a bit grumpy to start with. I think it was being asked to flex and we aren't flexing and no coaching as to what to do so I said HOW! what I am doing or trying to do isn't working. Josie was preoccupied with some mares in the paddock. We moved a bit further away and I was given instruction on what to do and things got much better. We did some really nice trot to walk transitions.

The little miss wasn't listening to my legs for leg yield but we improved. C wants me to make contact at the halt but I must not be using my legs properly as we just go forward. When he stood in front of us we got it. I have stayed away from a lot of contact at the walk and not even trying at the halt during my training of Josie. C said we will be fine at medium walk so I will try.

Next we did some canter work on the circle which was fairly good. To get Josie and I bending properly so she isn't counter flexed at the canter he asked us to do a figure eight with a simple change (come down to trot) and pick up the other lead. Sure we can do this. Josie picked up her next lead, we took a stride or two and then BAM! We hit the ground. A lot goes through your mind very quickly during something like this. Main concern was stay on, hope she is okay and hope she doesn't take off bucking when she gets up. She went down to her chest with her front legs under her. We were still cantering in a way, she kinda of lunged forward twice and tried to resume her canter. She didn't pull any shitty stuff which was awesome. Senda did this with me once, it was a tripping fall. I thought what did I do to cause this. I got Josie down to a walk and she was okay. I think the adrenaline hit us both at the same time. Well, her's must have hit first as she had to get up. I stayed out of her way and rode through it. I walked her and headed over to look at our foot falls to see what happened. Here was a 7 inch or so long by 4 inch rock. You could see where her shoe hit the rock. Mind you this is a brand new arena redone at the end of last year. Quite the booby trap!

After resting a bit we went back to the exercise and were getting better at it. Then again all hell broke loose. This time two mares (the ones she was eyeballing earlier) were going at through the fence. They took down the second strand of barbwire and two strands of the this thick white cable that serves as the fencing. I had pretty much had it with the yahooing for the evening.

M rode down and notified J and they came up to take care of it. I felt bad for the horse in the paddock but darn it, don't kick at fences.

So Josie's legs look fine but she scunned up her nostril on top - that tells you how far we went down. I took some ibuprofen as I could feel my old Tilly injury acting up already.