Winter travellers
12 December 2010 23:01![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
glenatronYesterday we rode both ponies out for six mile circuit on the common. Both horses were quite full of it - Zorro in an unusually twitchy mood and Small excited to be going out some new places. It is so nice to see the little grey guy full of running and superkeen for adventure. For the first time in a couple of years we went trotting together and Zorro couldn't quite keep up and kept trying to canter and I kept asking him to keep trotting because I knew that if he started cantering Small would start cantering and soon there would be no brakes anywhere on the common. It was a really enjoyable ride.
This afternoon I rode Xefira who I haven't been able to school for a little while because the arena has been frozen solid. She is still great fun to ride- we spent a lot of time working on sharpening up transitions and maintaining bend on the circle. Doing some fence work she had some pretty awesome stops- sharp enough that I had to sit back to avoid going straight over her head. We even did a little bit of canter, although that did feel a bit like an explosion in a legs factory.
After that it was Zorro's turn and the very generous![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sleepsy_mouse lunged us so I could practice focussing on my seat and position bareback in faster gaits. Zorro is a really great lunge lesson type horse and we got a much improved canter by the end. I wouldn't be able to do it without something to hold onto yet, but a few more sessions like that could well do the trick. The only unfortunate side to it is that I have a feeling that I will be having trouble walking tomorrow.
The good news is that I'm on leave for much of this week ( turns out I got in late with regards to booking Christmas leave so I had to book this week off at the last minute as I couldn't take it over the Christmas-New-Year week and I have already got all my rollover leave lined up ) so hopefully there will be more adventures to be found in the next few days.
This afternoon I rode Xefira who I haven't been able to school for a little while because the arena has been frozen solid. She is still great fun to ride- we spent a lot of time working on sharpening up transitions and maintaining bend on the circle. Doing some fence work she had some pretty awesome stops- sharp enough that I had to sit back to avoid going straight over her head. We even did a little bit of canter, although that did feel a bit like an explosion in a legs factory.
After that it was Zorro's turn and the very generous
sleepsy_mouse lunged us so I could practice focussing on my seat and position bareback in faster gaits. Zorro is a really great lunge lesson type horse and we got a much improved canter by the end. I wouldn't be able to do it without something to hold onto yet, but a few more sessions like that could well do the trick. The only unfortunate side to it is that I have a feeling that I will be having trouble walking tomorrow.The good news is that I'm on leave for much of this week ( turns out I got in late with regards to booking Christmas leave so I had to book this week off at the last minute as I couldn't take it over the Christmas-New-Year week and I have already got all my rollover leave lined up ) so hopefully there will be more adventures to be found in the next few days.