First off: I will be at the AERC convention this weekend! I would love to meet up with folks if anyone else is going - comment, email, whatever. (It's harder to recognize me without the Haflinger.)
February was a pretty dull month. Serious slump. Unmotivated. 57 miles, two serious works, just the one where we stayed near 5mph. One incident with the tree. Blogging should step back up as we start actually doing stuff again! I won't bother recapping goals. They didn't happen, or if they did, they just managed to happen by themselves.
March I have higher hopes for.
Mounting practice. It's funny how anxiety is. I used to hop up on giant horses in an English saddle with short stirrups weekly, sometimes daily. That was totally fine. Then I got used to just sliding onto Confetti (who needs stirrups when you're already higher than the horse?).
I tried ground-mounting in a dressage saddle a few years ago. The saddle started to roll. That fear, unfortunately, has stuck. Intellectually, I know the saddle is not going to roll. Emotionally, it still feels like it might. I have a 14hand pony and I'm too afraid to mount from the ground.
So. This month, I want to work on using stirrups to mount. I can use stirrups to mount from low mounting blocks, or high mounting blocks, or fences, or whatever. There's fear about putting all my weight in one stirrup. I want to fix that.
Tied in with that, we're going back to giving treats after mounting. She needs to stand, not walk off, even if I'm anxiety-ridden and not holding her in one place.
Long trots. As was mentioned in the last post, it feels like it should be beneficial to continue our 'trot at any speed as long as possible' training, and gradually amp up the distance. I can already think of ways to add a mile or two to the 8-mile loop.
Rasp hooves weekly. This didn't happen enough in February. It needs to happen in March. It's important to me that we start training in boots again, and to do that effectively, I need to be maintaining the trim between paid farrier visits.
Have fun at the convention and good luck with the march goals. Re: the mounting w stirrups thing - for some reason I think issues like that just crop up for adult riders. Not entirely sure why tho... Good luck addressing it. Maybe working on it after a ride will help - like when you dismount linger a bit in one stirrup, then get right back on again? Good luck in any case!
ReplyDeleteHave a great time at the convention. Wave as you drive through Auburn! I have plans or I would have loved to go.
ReplyDeleteYour goals sound very attainable. I especially think having her stand while mounting is important, an important safety feature many people overlook!