The weather was extremely bi-polar today. Windy/pouring down rain one minute then sunshine-y and warm the next. I rescued Jetta hiding under a tree in the pasture during a downpour and as soon as we made it into the barn the sun came out again. Figures.
Jetta got a good grooming to get some of her shedding hair off. She looks a little silly. The hair on her neck and hip is growing back in from her trace clip, but her belly hair... isn't. Oh well, I just hope it comes back eventually.
I saddled Jetta up to go lunge with the intention of just seeing how she was feeling and maybe not riding. She looked good so I put some trot poles out and then got on with just the rope halter. It was interesting. I haven't ridden her in the rope halter since she was first started under saddle in the round pen, otherwise if I want to go bitless we just use the hackamore. I expected her not to be very good and she wasn't. She wasn't necessarily bad, but with one rein (I can't find my 12' lead rope) there ended up being a lot of circles.
It's amazing though how much she pays attention to my body cues for directionality. Now if she'd only listen to body cues to slow her down too, I'd be in heaven. But in trying to get her to go over the poles at the trot, she'd decide that she could easily get out of it by turning towards whatever side I had the rein on. But if I angled my body in the opposite direction and only put the tiniest bit of leg (so she wouldn't decide to canter) she'd go that way. Sweet! But of course all of this was at Mach 10 and it was difficult to get her to slow down. Pony was wire-d. But we were able to finish on a good note when she trotted over the poles and wasn't going as fast. I wouldn't call it the ideal speed, but it was better. We'll see how sore she is tomorrow :(
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| Apparently earless and buttless horse. |
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| What are we doing?? |
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| Unenthused. |
Don is the same way - easy to steer with no bridle, but the brakes aren't all there when it comes to voice commands or body cues. I think slowing down off my seat may never be in our future, I've been trying it for so long.
ReplyDeleteWe used to either convince our Ochem lab TA to let us work in groups, or we'd secretly each do one variable in the experiment and then combine our data at the end. He never caught on. Our lab grades were great.
I don't think any of us made better than a D in the class though.