Bird for a road work spin yesterday
Jun. 19th, 2023 08:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickWe've got more hay down so it was road work yesterday. It was fine road work, which is to say solid marching walk in a hup-two-three-four fashion, the point of which is to truck along making good time with a loose back and a walk that's not quite shoved into laterality. I steer to keep him on the shoulder of the road and otherwise let him get on with it. We did covered bridge, other hill, and covered bridge again for a solid hour+ of marching.
Here's a picture. It's a topo map of the appropriate area, which yeah you could totally doxx me but I don't think anyone cares that much.
The pink line is the road in to the hill work area. It isn't any joke in terms of grade.
The blue line is the covered bridge road, which is a fairly brutal up-n-down that also (bonus) goes over the local covered bridge that is open to traffic. (Here's what that looks like from horseback if you're interested.
The red line is the other hill, which is similar in elevation but spread out over a bigger distance. Still effort but not quite as bad because it's not so steep There is also a loop that connects the two hills (not shown because it doesn't fit on the map) but there's a lot of flat there and it doesn't have shade and sometimes the traffic is a bit much and since they repaved the shoulder is crappy in spots. *sigh*
Couple of reasons we do road work besides the obvious STAY OFF THE CUT HAY objective. (No, we don't have a ring. Most of my flat work happens in the hayfield. The rest of it happens along road shoulders and state forest roads and very infrequently we get to someone else's ring.)
First, it provides a looser, less micro-managed outing. While dressage has obvious benefits in the overall musculature of the horse and his flexibility and balance and strength and shit, it is also a very micro-managing sort of a ride. You have to be on task the whole time and your HORSE has to be on task the whole time in a fairly attentive and nit-picky sort of way. It's a lot. Bird has about three good dressage-focused rides in him per week but he needs more than three rides a week for the level of fitness and strength that our current projects require of him. Road work is way more relaxed than dressage efforts -- there are only, like, three directives. Stay on the shoulder. Keep trucking along in a biggish walk. Don't be a jerk when cars go by. Get those three nailed down and I'll leave you alone about the rest of it.
Second, there is a lot more terrain in road work than one encounters while making lopsided ovals in the hayfield. Road work has hills, big ones. People who don't ride over terrain are frequently unaware of how effortful terrain can be.
Uphill: I do not have to do a whole lot to get Bird to engage with his hinds if he's marching up a hill. The hill does that for me by way of being a hill. If he wants to truck along going up the hill (and he knows that "truck along" is one of the objectives of road work), he's gonna have to push with his hinds. I do not have to tell him to do this or fuss about trying to GET him to do it. The hill does that work for me. All I have to do is sit there and watch the scenery go by.
Downhill: Here, there is more rider involvement to get the horse to "sit" better and descend in a more controlled manner. For regular downhill, I generally leave him to his own devices but we have a few sections that are quite steep and for those I do expect more of a "sit" walk with some controlled descent efforts. This is not an effort-free activity and you can burn up the abs going downhill a lot faster than you will run them out going uphill.
Third: There is a lot more to see out and about. It's good for him to have some variety in his experiences. I'm not saying he's never gonna look at shit, more that having shit to look at keeps him fresh and perky. It's good for his mental health.
Fourth: I cannot, literally cannot, grind abs on Bird every time I ride him. He gets flat and sour and unhappy if I do that. He needs time doing OTHER THINGS and road work is one of the OTHER THINGS that he can do with actual fitness benefits and mental health benefits and whatnot that gives him a break from ab grinding.
So, we road work. Yesterday I had Trys along on Peake, but when I'm by myself, I sing to Bird as we truck along. I am a really, really bad singer, but he doesn't seem to mind. One of my current favorites is Green Grow the Rushes O. Also I live in the sticks, so other people cannot hear me belting out folk rounds of a religious nature completely out of tune and frequently with the lyrics a bit jumbled. I also do a fantastic (I think it's fantastic. Possibly birds fall from trees, I wouldn't know.) rendition of She'll Be Comin' Round The Mountain When She Comes with sound effects. :)
Here's a picture. It's a topo map of the appropriate area, which yeah you could totally doxx me but I don't think anyone cares that much.
The pink line is the road in to the hill work area. It isn't any joke in terms of grade.
The blue line is the covered bridge road, which is a fairly brutal up-n-down that also (bonus) goes over the local covered bridge that is open to traffic. (Here's what that looks like from horseback if you're interested.
The red line is the other hill, which is similar in elevation but spread out over a bigger distance. Still effort but not quite as bad because it's not so steep There is also a loop that connects the two hills (not shown because it doesn't fit on the map) but there's a lot of flat there and it doesn't have shade and sometimes the traffic is a bit much and since they repaved the shoulder is crappy in spots. *sigh*
Couple of reasons we do road work besides the obvious STAY OFF THE CUT HAY objective. (No, we don't have a ring. Most of my flat work happens in the hayfield. The rest of it happens along road shoulders and state forest roads and very infrequently we get to someone else's ring.)
First, it provides a looser, less micro-managed outing. While dressage has obvious benefits in the overall musculature of the horse and his flexibility and balance and strength and shit, it is also a very micro-managing sort of a ride. You have to be on task the whole time and your HORSE has to be on task the whole time in a fairly attentive and nit-picky sort of way. It's a lot. Bird has about three good dressage-focused rides in him per week but he needs more than three rides a week for the level of fitness and strength that our current projects require of him. Road work is way more relaxed than dressage efforts -- there are only, like, three directives. Stay on the shoulder. Keep trucking along in a biggish walk. Don't be a jerk when cars go by. Get those three nailed down and I'll leave you alone about the rest of it.
Second, there is a lot more terrain in road work than one encounters while making lopsided ovals in the hayfield. Road work has hills, big ones. People who don't ride over terrain are frequently unaware of how effortful terrain can be.
Uphill: I do not have to do a whole lot to get Bird to engage with his hinds if he's marching up a hill. The hill does that for me by way of being a hill. If he wants to truck along going up the hill (and he knows that "truck along" is one of the objectives of road work), he's gonna have to push with his hinds. I do not have to tell him to do this or fuss about trying to GET him to do it. The hill does that work for me. All I have to do is sit there and watch the scenery go by.
Downhill: Here, there is more rider involvement to get the horse to "sit" better and descend in a more controlled manner. For regular downhill, I generally leave him to his own devices but we have a few sections that are quite steep and for those I do expect more of a "sit" walk with some controlled descent efforts. This is not an effort-free activity and you can burn up the abs going downhill a lot faster than you will run them out going uphill.
Third: There is a lot more to see out and about. It's good for him to have some variety in his experiences. I'm not saying he's never gonna look at shit, more that having shit to look at keeps him fresh and perky. It's good for his mental health.
Fourth: I cannot, literally cannot, grind abs on Bird every time I ride him. He gets flat and sour and unhappy if I do that. He needs time doing OTHER THINGS and road work is one of the OTHER THINGS that he can do with actual fitness benefits and mental health benefits and whatnot that gives him a break from ab grinding.
So, we road work. Yesterday I had Trys along on Peake, but when I'm by myself, I sing to Bird as we truck along. I am a really, really bad singer, but he doesn't seem to mind. One of my current favorites is Green Grow the Rushes O. Also I live in the sticks, so other people cannot hear me belting out folk rounds of a religious nature completely out of tune and frequently with the lyrics a bit jumbled. I also do a fantastic (I think it's fantastic. Possibly birds fall from trees, I wouldn't know.) rendition of She'll Be Comin' Round The Mountain When She Comes with sound effects. :)
