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Sep. 9th, 2011 10:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickSo we went out to ride after (school/work) today.
It rained. Actually, until then, it'd been going really well. Everybody got there in a timely fashion. Everybody got her horse caught. Everybody located her stuff. (I usually do "his or her" but all the riders and all the horses are female so I really, really do mean "her" here. It sounds so weird, though. Like even though there is no male in the group, either human or equine, I should still be saying "Everybody located his gear" or whatever. English, you are broken.) It was going swimmingly until we mounted up and headed out on the fifteen minutes of warm-up. I felt the first drops as I turned the Garmin watch on. :(
We would have gotten a head start on the rain except that one of my children did not have her helmet on. She was on her horse, but her helmet was not on her head. So, we sat in the driveway and I allowed as how "Something was wrong and had to be found and fixed before we could proceed." and let the kids figure it out. The helmetless child was not the one who spotted the problem.
It did not rain a little. This was not a caressing mist or a gentle drizzle. On the plus side (as Alannah pointed out), there was no hail. There were no strong winds. It was strong (but not torrential) rain of a continuous and steady nature. It wasn't even particularly cold out -- the temp stayed in the mid seventies, so the rain was pretty warm as September rains in PA go.
Now, I nearly drowned Alannah on her first outing with us. I made JC (or whatever) ride in the downpour yesterday. Olivia just wants to be on a horse, no matter what, and she's been out on all of the rainy days. For her, rain is no object. The Dreadful Children are now convinced that there do not exist days on which it rains "too hard" for riding. (My saddle is going to mold if it keeps getting rained on, ffs.) Alannah's mom texted today to see if we were riding in the rain or not. I texted back that if it wasn't "torrential downpours" we would be riding. I think "torrential downpours" are like monsoon season or similar. Today wasn't torrential, just steady. It turns out that if you spend an hour and change riding in steady, heavy rain, you get soaked. Who knew?
So we're riding off in the rain.
"Can we do stretches/exercises?"
Yes. I never thought the stretches and exercises would be as popular as they are. The kids think they're wonderful. We do toe touches, cross-body toe touches, touch-the-ears, touch-the-tail, airplane, airplane twists left and right, hands-behind-back, etc. We do 'em at the walk for warm-up and then when the horses have settled into a steady trot, we do 'em at the trot to the best of our respective abilities. Alannah isn't quite ready to drop the reins on her horse's neck. Maybe next year...
"Are we going to play a game today?"
No. We play games sometimes because endless trotting is not that exciting. I mean, I find it meditative and relaxing. But the kids are like nine. They do not find endless trotting meditative and relaxing. I'm not sure nine year olds come in meditative... or relaxing. So, we play games. Like, y'know, the game of threes. I give you three things and you pick the odd one out. You have to give your reason for deciding because if your reason is good enough, you can be right even if I didn't think of it that way. The other day, it was plane, bus, submarine. (I tossed submarine, as "not commercial transportation" but Olivia said obviously it was "bus" because the other two didn't travel on roads. Good enough for me!) Sometimes we play numbers. Numbers is I give you a series of numbers and you tell me the next number in the series. So, I go 3, 5, 7 (9) or 7, 14, 21 (28) or whatever. Sometimes we play "Name a part of a horse" and keep taking turns until people run out. You have to tell where your part is -- you can't just shout "Hock!" and leave it at that, you have to explain where it is. (Yes, even the games are educational. I'm like that.)
"What are we talking about today?"
Equitation. Again. They do not like to hear about equitation, why it's important, what it's for. I am undeterred. Improving one's own equitation does wonders for 'improving' one's horse and I'm not giving up on it as a topic. The subsection of equitation today was "on stopping" and how "stopping" was not just something you did with the reins. Not a thrill a minute, but still important to know. There was eye-rolling behind me. :( However, at the end of the ride, almost home, Whimsy spooked large at something while I was riding right next to Alannah, one of my more timid Dreadful Children. Since I learned to sit spooks from the master (Ah, Meatly -- the world was very full of danger when I rode you!) it was nothing and I laughed at Whims and gathered her back up. Alannah sat there with her mouth open, kind of shocked at the whole thing.
"Okay, did you see what Whims did?"
"She leaped sideways."
"Yep, that's called a spook. She saw something that scared her and leaped. Horses sometimes do that. And what happened to me?"
"The top half of you swayed, but your butt stayed in the saddle."
"Because of equitation. I was not paying much attention to Whimsy and her spook caught me totally off guard but my equitation saved me anyway. That's what I mean about having a good seat."
"OOOooh."
Equitation: Terribly useful for Not Falling Off. (Not as useful as having a mile and a half of leg, a low center of gravity, and tons of experience riding a much faster, more violent spooker than Whimsy, who really rather sucks at the sport... but I didn't share that part. Trying to motivate my learners, here.)
"What happens if it rains at the competitive ride?"
We will get wet. I am a bedrock of support for my Dreadful Children, I am.
It rained. Actually, until then, it'd been going really well. Everybody got there in a timely fashion. Everybody got her horse caught. Everybody located her stuff. (I usually do "his or her" but all the riders and all the horses are female so I really, really do mean "her" here. It sounds so weird, though. Like even though there is no male in the group, either human or equine, I should still be saying "Everybody located his gear" or whatever. English, you are broken.) It was going swimmingly until we mounted up and headed out on the fifteen minutes of warm-up. I felt the first drops as I turned the Garmin watch on. :(
We would have gotten a head start on the rain except that one of my children did not have her helmet on. She was on her horse, but her helmet was not on her head. So, we sat in the driveway and I allowed as how "Something was wrong and had to be found and fixed before we could proceed." and let the kids figure it out. The helmetless child was not the one who spotted the problem.
It did not rain a little. This was not a caressing mist or a gentle drizzle. On the plus side (as Alannah pointed out), there was no hail. There were no strong winds. It was strong (but not torrential) rain of a continuous and steady nature. It wasn't even particularly cold out -- the temp stayed in the mid seventies, so the rain was pretty warm as September rains in PA go.
Now, I nearly drowned Alannah on her first outing with us. I made JC (or whatever) ride in the downpour yesterday. Olivia just wants to be on a horse, no matter what, and she's been out on all of the rainy days. For her, rain is no object. The Dreadful Children are now convinced that there do not exist days on which it rains "too hard" for riding. (My saddle is going to mold if it keeps getting rained on, ffs.) Alannah's mom texted today to see if we were riding in the rain or not. I texted back that if it wasn't "torrential downpours" we would be riding. I think "torrential downpours" are like monsoon season or similar. Today wasn't torrential, just steady. It turns out that if you spend an hour and change riding in steady, heavy rain, you get soaked. Who knew?
So we're riding off in the rain.
"Can we do stretches/exercises?"
Yes. I never thought the stretches and exercises would be as popular as they are. The kids think they're wonderful. We do toe touches, cross-body toe touches, touch-the-ears, touch-the-tail, airplane, airplane twists left and right, hands-behind-back, etc. We do 'em at the walk for warm-up and then when the horses have settled into a steady trot, we do 'em at the trot to the best of our respective abilities. Alannah isn't quite ready to drop the reins on her horse's neck. Maybe next year...
"Are we going to play a game today?"
No. We play games sometimes because endless trotting is not that exciting. I mean, I find it meditative and relaxing. But the kids are like nine. They do not find endless trotting meditative and relaxing. I'm not sure nine year olds come in meditative... or relaxing. So, we play games. Like, y'know, the game of threes. I give you three things and you pick the odd one out. You have to give your reason for deciding because if your reason is good enough, you can be right even if I didn't think of it that way. The other day, it was plane, bus, submarine. (I tossed submarine, as "not commercial transportation" but Olivia said obviously it was "bus" because the other two didn't travel on roads. Good enough for me!) Sometimes we play numbers. Numbers is I give you a series of numbers and you tell me the next number in the series. So, I go 3, 5, 7 (9) or 7, 14, 21 (28) or whatever. Sometimes we play "Name a part of a horse" and keep taking turns until people run out. You have to tell where your part is -- you can't just shout "Hock!" and leave it at that, you have to explain where it is. (Yes, even the games are educational. I'm like that.)
"What are we talking about today?"
Equitation. Again. They do not like to hear about equitation, why it's important, what it's for. I am undeterred. Improving one's own equitation does wonders for 'improving' one's horse and I'm not giving up on it as a topic. The subsection of equitation today was "on stopping" and how "stopping" was not just something you did with the reins. Not a thrill a minute, but still important to know. There was eye-rolling behind me. :( However, at the end of the ride, almost home, Whimsy spooked large at something while I was riding right next to Alannah, one of my more timid Dreadful Children. Since I learned to sit spooks from the master (Ah, Meatly -- the world was very full of danger when I rode you!) it was nothing and I laughed at Whims and gathered her back up. Alannah sat there with her mouth open, kind of shocked at the whole thing.
"Okay, did you see what Whims did?"
"She leaped sideways."
"Yep, that's called a spook. She saw something that scared her and leaped. Horses sometimes do that. And what happened to me?"
"The top half of you swayed, but your butt stayed in the saddle."
"Because of equitation. I was not paying much attention to Whimsy and her spook caught me totally off guard but my equitation saved me anyway. That's what I mean about having a good seat."
"OOOooh."
Equitation: Terribly useful for Not Falling Off. (Not as useful as having a mile and a half of leg, a low center of gravity, and tons of experience riding a much faster, more violent spooker than Whimsy, who really rather sucks at the sport... but I didn't share that part. Trying to motivate my learners, here.)
"What happens if it rains at the competitive ride?"
We will get wet. I am a bedrock of support for my Dreadful Children, I am.
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no subject
Date: 2011-09-12 03:57 pm (UTC)Heh. I think the issue with children (well, with people in general) is that most of the time they already know (or suspect) what the factual answers to their questions are, so they're not really asking the question to find out the answer to that question but to confirm that the question they don't really need to have answered is the *right* question they don't really need to have answered.