Anyhow, when Zhizhu woke me up this morning, she told me that Ziggy continued to improve throughout the rest of the night, and he was actually grazing at the round bale, and looked like he felt right as rain. I threw on some clothes and went out to check on him, and when I did, he was standing outside his stall waiting for his breakfast. I scooped out about half his normal grain ration, put it in his bucket, and let him in the stall. He happily trotted in and started chowing down. I went back inside and called work explaining that I was going to be late, and laid back down in bed to get some more sleep. At about 08:00, I rolled out of bed and took a shower and then got dressed for work. Once I was dressed, I put on my boots and went out to turn out Zigs. Much to my delight, he had finished all his grain, and was eating his alfalfa from last night. In short, he was acting like his old self. He walked right out of his stall, took a drink, and went to hang out with the donkies. From the looks of it, it seems like it was just a case of us upping his feed too quickly, and giving him a tummy ache. He'll get tonight and tomorrow off, and I'll pick him back up one either Sunday or Monday and see how he's doing. One of the other things I'll be doing is getting him some better alfalfa. The stuff we had to buy the last time around are these little tiny compressed bales, and are very stemmy, and not very green at all. Of course, I'll be keeping a close eye on him in the coming days, (a huge benefit of having my horse at home!) and seeing how things go.
Hopefully, that will be the extent of my excitement for the summer as far as his stomach issues. What I am hoping for, however, is plenty of excitement as far as improving my riding goes! Speaking of which, I seem to remember that I owe you, dear reader, not one, but two rides to document. May it never be said that I do not honor my debts! I shall use conventional chronology, and report the events of my ride on Wednesday, proceeding on to releate the details of my lesson yesterday, finally detailing my plans for my rides this weekend and beyond. I do hope that you will find said chronology an acceptable vehicle for narrative. Is everybody with me? Splendid. Let's begin, shall we?
Wednesday, as prognosticated in Tuesday's post, I resolved to work on my two-point. Before I dove into that, however, I worked on doing round trot and canter circles. On the left rein, they went quite well, I found Ziggy relaxed, forward, and fairly nicely bent. I did notice that I have a habit of wanting to overbend my horses, so I tried to make sure that I wasn't doing that. Satisfied with my progress, I switched to the right rein, and while the circles did not go nearly as well, there was indeed progress. The main problem I had was that Zigs would try to fall to his outside shoulder and try to cut the circle off. Well, I suppose in the interest of not embellishing the truth, one should omit the word "try" from the previous sentence when reading. My other issue, which I am fairly convinced was due to my position, was that my half-halts weren't really all that effective in getting him to round up. But, as mentioned previously, I was getting a shape that was something approaching round in its concept though not necessarily so in its execution. While not precisely my stated goal, I am prepared to call it progress. Since the trot went so well, I decided to try some canter circles in as well. I am pleased to report that I not only managed to get my up transition within a stride or two of when I asked for it, but Zigs was also doing significantly rounder circles at the canter than he was at the trot. I think that as far as Zigs is concerned, it's easier for him to canter than trot. The down transitions were... rough, but for this ride, the objective was two-point, so I didn't sweat it much.
I gave Zigs a walk break so we could both re-organize and re-group, and I then gathered up my reins, and asked him to trot on, going up into two-point. In the spirit of continuing honestly, and constructive self-criticism, I must report that I do not feel like my form was correct. I am fairly sure that I should have been feeling more weight in my heels, and that I shouldn't have been resting my hands quite so heavily on his neck. I also think that I did not have my back in the correct position, as after a while, my lower back began to hurt. All was not lost, however. I did notice that I was allowing my knees an hips to flex and bend to compensate for Zig's movement, and all things considered, I did feel fairly comfortable up there. Although, if I could get someone willing to put me on the end of a longe line, and critique my form, I would certainly not turn that down. Not that I am dropping hints, or anything like that, though.;)
Feeling a little adventurous, I decided to try two-point in the canter as well. It started out well enough, but as I headed towards the gate, he cut a really sharp right turn. If I had my heels down and my weight up off of my horse, this would not have been a problem. Since none of the above was true, my right foot popped out of my stirrup and I nearly pitched myself off over his shoulder. By some miracle, I managed to regain my balance, but I was then in the realm of Cross Country Attack Pony. Eventually, he and I negotiated an armistice, and I decided to work on lengthening and shortening his stride at the walk to finish out the ride.
Those are the events of Wednesday, digitally logged for your entertainment, my entertainment, and future reminiscence. Moving forward in our chronology, we inevitably come to the day known as Thursday by the Gregorian reckoning. Taking cues from Wednesday, Thursday proved to also be an interesting ride. At long last, I was able to take a lesson on Sonata. Since it had been a month since last I had a lesson, I was sort of expecting sub-optimal performance on my part. Sonata had just recently seen the chiropractor and gotten her hips injected, and I must say, she was moving quite nicely. She had a lot more swing in her walk, bounce in her trot, and was a lot more willing to canter on both leads. That being said, I completely lacked the ability to get her to go round,or get her to circle. It was one of those rides where you're telling your training, "I can ride, really! I promise!!" In order to get her to go out to a 20 meter circle, I was having to open my outside rein to well past my knee, turn my upper body completely to the outside of the circle, put my inside leg on strong, and post my inside hip past her outside shoulder.
By the time we stopped for water, my legs had the consistency of something between Cool Whip and Jello, and I hadn't even cantered yet. Fortunately, I got to rest my legs for a bit while my trainer talked. After a drink of water, I went up to canter. First was the left lead. I got the canter pretty much immediately, which was good, but the problem was getting her to do a 20 meter circle. I kept overshooting one set of cones, and undershooting the other. Again, I was having to haul on my inside and outside reins to get her where I needed her to go. I eventually got it on the left rein, so we switched to the right rein. That went considerably less optimally. In the interest of efficiency, the right rein can be summed up in the final 2 minutes of it, during which my trainer was yelling, "I DON'T CARE IF IT'S NOT PRETTY, MAKE THAT MARE CIRCLE! COWBOY HER IF YOU HAVE TO!" It was most certainly not pretty, but I did make her do 3 20 meter circles. After the third one, my trainer told me that was good and we were done, which was good, because at that point, I didn't have any legs left, so you can imagine my shock when I dismounted, and two objects below my waist supported my weight.
I will be riding Sonata again Sunday morning, before heading out to my Dad's ranch for father's day festivities. With any luck, I will keep my legs after the ride is over.
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