Tough Love

I felt like I was skipping school by taking Wednesday off work to ride horses. Better yet, it was for a XC clinic in the city. Tough life, am I right? :)

The morning started out positively - somehow we got three trailer loads of horses and all their belongings and associated people to the ferry on time. Yay for being on schedule!

The equestrian park we went to was gorgeous, and had what felt like hundreds of jumps set up everywhere. Even better, they had tons of starter and pre entry stuff, little versions of basically everything the big kids get to jump.

Upper field has a bunch of baby sized stuff

Midge was quite honestly being a bit of a jerk as we warmed up...ignoring me and screaming at all her new friends instead. Also, she was being quite sour about going away from the trailer/her friends. We've been out and about enough and hack out alone all the time, so I had very little sympathy for her and just got down to work, reinforcing the forward button and bending and changing directions to keep her busy and focused on me.

Our lesson started with centering a single starter level log. Midge thought that was exciting and super fun. We then added in some more logs, and a little pre entry ramp type thing. She felt a little sticky at the ramp, but I read the situation right and got her forward enough that stopping wasn't an option. Next, we added some little houses...and the wheels fell off.

 I was given some tough love and reamed out a bit for my part in whatever was happening. Honestly, that made me mad/upset/overwhelmed because I didn't/don't understand what I need to do differently. It was made known to everyone that I Was Riding Very Badly (and there is no excuse, ever, for doing that)  While I agree, I was pretty down because honestly, I was doing the very best I could and trying really hard to just follow instructions and have a really positive outing. Also, as mentioned above, I wasn't really picking up on what exactly I was doing so wrong.

Following that, we had a bunch more misadventures at that line of houses....Midge was super about being forward, but something was happening in the last second. She'd canter up to the fence and convince everyone she was going, but in the last stride slam on the brakes and kind of duck her shoulder/slide over/through...basically the momentum was the only thing getting us to the other side, if we got there. So, we got banished in shame from the exercise and never did get a good run through there. Boo. I may have shed a few tears of frustration, but I was careful to keep some distance because if no one sees you cry it obviously didn't happen, right?; )

By this point the Bridget E-Brake was stuck firmly on and it felt icky.

We moved on to a different part of the course and trainer offered to ride Bridget. Yes please...please someone tell me whatever secret ingredients I am failing to understand! And, Bridget stopped. And stopped again. Oh my. I'm a terrible person, because I was torn between "Ha ha, see, she's very tricky!" and "Yep, I ruined my pony and now she won't even jump for a pro"

Luckily, there is a reason she is the pro. Bridget was made to scramble over from a standstill. My take home for that was that she can jump 2'6" from a standstill, so if that's what you need to do to get to the other side, then do it. Eventually she'll figure out we are going no matter what and that it would be easier to canter up and jump. She galloped B around a bit and jumped some more things but honestly it looked like a lot of work. It was also mentioned that maybe it wasn't all me riding so very badly, the pony is just really tricky to get to and over the jumps. I wasn't feeling it, because honestly, once someone loses their temper or overwhelms me I have a hard time moving past it.

I hopped on and did a little course, and it was sticky, but we got around. Maybe I am being negative, but I didn't feel much better about things, since coach had already made her scramble over the same jumps a few minutes before and it didn't feel much better for me - also I have a funny feeling if we added something new the refusals and misadventures would have started again.

So, a rough day. The pony and I started out having the best day, but then both kinda shut down and wanted to be anywhere but there. If I look back on this blog, I can see pretty much all the new or difficult things with B were initially met with "Nope, don't wanna, can't make me!" Even stuff she loves now like trail riding or jumping in the arena. So there is hope that with hard work we'll conquer this too. But the other part of me is thinking things like being advised to wear bigger spurs are maybe a sign we're on the wrong path. I don't know...will have to think on this a lot more.

Not us. I want so badly for this to be us :(