I think when you start blogging or even updating your facebook status its easy to gloss over the bad days. Bad days suck and no one really wants to start a post with Today I really failed, oops. But as riders we all learn from our bad days. So guess what, the other day I really failed. Ooops! Magni and I took Ullinn to our monthly riding club. Due to the incredibly disgusting and generally hibernation worth weather we hadnt done any work for about three weeks. Mistake Number One. We probably should have left Ullinn at home to focus just on us, especially since I was only braving the weather for the level assessment. Mistake Number Two. The arena, like most of the grounds was soaking wet. In fact the arena was one giant puddle. Magni doesnt do puddles. Dams? of course! The ocean? If you insist. But puddles? No way! And I admit, its something I havent really worked on fixing. Welcome Mistake Number Three! Now Magni is an amazing horse, he is talented, he is intelligent and he is sensitive. He is also stubborn, he likes to test his rider and did I mention the intelligence? End result was a horse who didnt want to walk in a straight line, didnt want to go in the gate or past the gate or past his friends that he had only just met and normally doesnt care about. He called to Ullinn, he rushed sideways. He was heavy on the front, he wanted to ignore every aid in the universe. Heres my bit of learning though, and here was where the mistakes stopped. I forgot about assessment, I forgot about how much of a butt he was being and I forgot about what anyone else was doing. I decided Magni was walking a straight line. I didnt care how long it took, just one straight line. It took awhile, but he did it and I dismounted and called it a day. Sometimes nothing goes to plan, as horse riders we dont just deal with our own bad days, we deal with our horses as well! On the fly and on the back of a hairy stubborn beast we have to readjust our thoughts and find whatever win we can get. Because it pays off. Our next ride? Not perfect but nowhere near the disaster of that day. And our next assessment? Were going to kick butt. Oh yeah, and we are going to work on that puddle issue.
Posted on: Tue, 05 Aug 2014 01:03:55 +0000
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