Blah/Adding Up The Miles

Blah. My word for the season. I've been super motivated to make a little progress. I don't want the horrible canter and awful transitions of the last couple of weeks to actually be a thing, so I am slightly optimistic they will (magically) be absent one of these days and our world will return to the happy rides of a month or two ago.

Not so much. But gradually, it IS getting a little better.Trainer was there last night and offered to ride her for me this weekend. Trainer was also pretty optimistic it's a normal phase - we are asking her to be a grown up pony now and do balanced transitions and go on the bit when asked. Throughout the time I've owned her, Bridget hasn't been too keen on anything resembling work, so I shouldn' t be surprised at the pony tantrums now that we've started asking a little more from her. Bridget says it's too hard to go forward into contact in the canter, so she'll just not go forward at all. Or she'll go really fast and drag you along...normal baby horse problems made worse by the fact she is not much of a trier by nature and also deceptively flexible/athletic.

We're in dressage land now for the forseeable future. Jumping wise, we can jump small courses and pick up our leads, but we need a more consistent, adjustable canter before we can move forward with bigger jumps or more complicated courses. In short, until we improve this canter we're kind of at an impasse.

Quick screen grab of our little motivational app

So, as a way to keep myself motivated and feeling like we are moving forward, I've created this fun app to chart our miles this winter. Essentially, I'm just tallying up our miles and seeing where we could travel in real world miles...like if we weren't stuck in an arena riding in circles. So far the results are surprising me - we cover some legit distances every week, and it's fun to imagine taking Bridget places. Our virtual start point is Mile 0 of Hwy 101. For now, we're going to travel down the Pacific Coast and see how far we get in a year :)