A Good Ride

I hope everyone had a good Christmas. My Christmas was a little crazy, but overall pretty good. I got several great presents that I love!

One of my gifts was a new bridle for Jetta. I have just the cheapy bridles that I paid $25 for and I hate them. They're stiff and uncomfortable and I just don't like them in general. This bridle is from Camelot and I really liked it's quality when I saw it in a tack store and now that it's home I love it even more. It has soft, thick leather, with very nice hardware. It came with rubber reins which felt great in my hands. What I didn't like was that it only came as a crank noseband with a flash, but I won't use it as such. It's kind of hard to find a nice dressage bridle without a crank I've noticed. They're out there, but there's more crank than "normal" nosebands. The plus for this bridle is that it has changeable colored padding - in bright blue, white and black!

It was pretty hard to fit on Jetta, and it's a full size, which is what size she normally wears, so I'm not sure if it's too big or too small, haha, it just depends on the area. The browband might be too small, but the noseband is slightly too large. I have officially decided that I hate crank nosebands (at least for lower level dressage, I have heard some convincing arguments about their use in the upper levels) not only because they forcibly close the horse's mouth, but also because it was sooo hard to get it to fit on her nose! Hmm. I'm going to ride in it once more so I can decide if I want to keep it or not, but overall I really like it. The rubber reins were great because they helped me keep a hold on the reins when she dives down on her forehand at the canter. Here she is unenthusiastically modeling it for me:

The noseband does look super chunky huh? Or I'm just used to the pencil thin nosebands because they looked great on Jazz, but silly on Jetta's mile long nose :)

I had a much better ride on Jetta this week. Our canter was much more relaxed and we had some great walk shoulder-ins again and one super nice leg yeild to the left. The right was a little sticky and our trot shoulder-ins weren't very pretty.

After we schooled in the new bridle I put on my hackamore because I wanted to see how she'd do. Jetta wasn't very happy cause she thought we were done, but she felt pretty nice in it.



Are we done yet?

 I was a little happier because I wasn't pulling on her mouth, but we lost a bit of our steering. I think I'll just ride her in it every so often and see if it improves. Otherwise, it'll just have to wait until I'm working with a horse that likes it better.

Overall, today felt very productive and I can't wait to head back to school so I can start riding daily again!