Cob Jockey

Connor had a swelling the size of my hand around the vaccine site when I went out on Thursday.  No temperature, heat or pain, so I cold hosed it and prepared to tell my trainer it needed to be a light lesson.

She ended up wanting to make it our last training ride, so that she could show me exactly what she's been doing with him and what the differences are between the way she rides and the way I ride.  He wasn't sore, but was definitely lethargic, so the ride didn't last long and she promised me a makeup as a result.

This is the site on Sunday after cold hosing, swelling has gone down quite a bit.

She did get the following points across:
- I should not ever lean my torso back and set my back against him.
- At the same time, he easily tosses me around into a less effective position, and I need to counter that by being firm in my abs/lower back/upper pelvis region.  I'm good at sitting up straight, but bad at "weighting" that straight position in my lower body.
- I should never pull back in my elbow, but instead use shorter reins/fingers for aids.
- I should never take my hands away from his neck, they need to stay in a box in front of the saddle.

And we had a fantastic ride on Sunday in which I put all that into practice.  Lately, I go into each ride thinking "I am GOING to get this horse on my aids," and I do.  It's a departure from my mindset in rides in the past, where I would get on my crooked, ADHD horse and not feel like I knew how to get good work out of him.

In other weekend news, I had some pretty fantastic blogger houseguests at the Hoosier Horse Park Hotel (aka my house) this weekend, but I'll let them out themselves!  I have a standing offer to friends for free housing, my husband's delicious cooking, and alcohol, if any of you are ever showing at the HHP and would like to save money on hotel/food.  We love having people over!

Dressage at 9:30am on a Sunday makes him yawn.