Busy wet Saturday...
Sep. 23rd, 2023 04:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickIt is supposed to rain all weekend. Doing pretty steadily for Saturday, anyway, but that cannot dampen my enthusiasm for Getting Things Done, damn it.
Got out of the house by 6:30 AM with a load of unwanted dead tree editions which I threw away, go me. Got money from the ATM so that I could go play dressage clinic, which is basically throw money at people who tell you that you are not doing riding well enough. Fed horses. Got a dunkin coffee and bagel (yeah, irresponsible but I do need to eat before dressage clinic or it'll end in tears and I was on a timeframe here) and fired up the truckie (go truckie!) and caught the horse (which took forever) and went to dressage clinic where I got rained on.
But it was OK. Horse was very enthusiastically forward (he likes the rain) and DLB had very enthusiastic and cheerful comments about Our Things though she is feeling a bit asea given my lack o' interest in showing. I felt that this knowledge might leave her rudderless which is why I didn't throw it out there earlier in our relationship. So, this go round we had "What are you working on?" and such which I haven't been working on shit because been working on conditioning and not so much of the sit n lift. However, competitive ride was cancelled because of low entries and fuckitall I'd just gotten the boot situation fixed up, but w/e, that's horses. Anyway, so I didn't field that fly ball worth shit except I mentioned that DLC (our other clinician) was working on a more buffed canter that didn't have the hind legs trailing behind. So we did stuff for that, including a lighter and more perfectly vertical rider position with a quick-quick outside leg doing the "c'mon there, bub" which is a timing thing to help him get his hinds up under him. Mixed success. Definitely more work to be done on that, particularly lifted chest.
Then we did work on half halt more subtly with shoulderblades back and down a hair and not being in his face or on his back and that was absolutely fine, he's ON BOARD there and it was a very unproblematic exercise on that front.
Then we did "games in walk and trot" because canter needs work before there can be canter games.
Walk and trot games, though, got high praise from DLB on the "wow, so smooth and subtle and light and what energy and lift" and blah blah blah. I'd said Birb had Pretty Little Walk and Pretty Little Trot and he totally does. Not only that it ain't ugly or hard or a mile of work to put him in 'em. Rider could do with sitting lighter for collection efforts and so that's a thing to work on but otherwise we're good on walk and trot games. Careful that the bigger endian ones don't get heavy or rapid in terms of tempo, but he's pretty confidently adjustable in that regard. DLB seemed pretty pleased with walk and trot games.
Driving home from dressage clinic, tenant called my cell to say that they had a leaking water heater. So I dropped off the horse and parked the truck/trailer and got my work truck and packed up a SECOND load of unwanted books and went off to play water heater. Which was fine, natch. Also threw away unwanted books, go me! (It will be about four more loads until any progress is apparent in the book room. I am Hercules. The book room is Augean.)
Following water heater fun, I went to the grocery and bought food items including some lovely acorn squash. Came home, put groceries away, loaded up book disposal containers (four five-gallon buckets and one sturdy milk crate) with next load of unwanted books for tomorrow morning. Cleaned and cooked acorn squash. Will eat some of them here shortly.
And now it's time for laundry!
Got out of the house by 6:30 AM with a load of unwanted dead tree editions which I threw away, go me. Got money from the ATM so that I could go play dressage clinic, which is basically throw money at people who tell you that you are not doing riding well enough. Fed horses. Got a dunkin coffee and bagel (yeah, irresponsible but I do need to eat before dressage clinic or it'll end in tears and I was on a timeframe here) and fired up the truckie (go truckie!) and caught the horse (which took forever) and went to dressage clinic where I got rained on.
But it was OK. Horse was very enthusiastically forward (he likes the rain) and DLB had very enthusiastic and cheerful comments about Our Things though she is feeling a bit asea given my lack o' interest in showing. I felt that this knowledge might leave her rudderless which is why I didn't throw it out there earlier in our relationship. So, this go round we had "What are you working on?" and such which I haven't been working on shit because been working on conditioning and not so much of the sit n lift. However, competitive ride was cancelled because of low entries and fuckitall I'd just gotten the boot situation fixed up, but w/e, that's horses. Anyway, so I didn't field that fly ball worth shit except I mentioned that DLC (our other clinician) was working on a more buffed canter that didn't have the hind legs trailing behind. So we did stuff for that, including a lighter and more perfectly vertical rider position with a quick-quick outside leg doing the "c'mon there, bub" which is a timing thing to help him get his hinds up under him. Mixed success. Definitely more work to be done on that, particularly lifted chest.
Then we did work on half halt more subtly with shoulderblades back and down a hair and not being in his face or on his back and that was absolutely fine, he's ON BOARD there and it was a very unproblematic exercise on that front.
Then we did "games in walk and trot" because canter needs work before there can be canter games.
Walk and trot games, though, got high praise from DLB on the "wow, so smooth and subtle and light and what energy and lift" and blah blah blah. I'd said Birb had Pretty Little Walk and Pretty Little Trot and he totally does. Not only that it ain't ugly or hard or a mile of work to put him in 'em. Rider could do with sitting lighter for collection efforts and so that's a thing to work on but otherwise we're good on walk and trot games. Careful that the bigger endian ones don't get heavy or rapid in terms of tempo, but he's pretty confidently adjustable in that regard. DLB seemed pretty pleased with walk and trot games.
Driving home from dressage clinic, tenant called my cell to say that they had a leaking water heater. So I dropped off the horse and parked the truck/trailer and got my work truck and packed up a SECOND load of unwanted books and went off to play water heater. Which was fine, natch. Also threw away unwanted books, go me! (It will be about four more loads until any progress is apparent in the book room. I am Hercules. The book room is Augean.)
Following water heater fun, I went to the grocery and bought food items including some lovely acorn squash. Came home, put groceries away, loaded up book disposal containers (four five-gallon buckets and one sturdy milk crate) with next load of unwanted books for tomorrow morning. Cleaned and cooked acorn squash. Will eat some of them here shortly.
And now it's time for laundry!
no subject
Date: 2023-09-27 01:29 am (UTC)Go you with getting rid of things.
no subject
Date: 2023-09-27 02:39 am (UTC)We did not used to do walk and trot games, this is a new thing she's added this summer. (She does not call it walk and trot games, but she also doesn't go for Dressage Talk like "medium" and "collected" and "extended", probably because she does not want to set up riders for disappointment. DLB would much prefer to be all "Yay, that's (thing), good job!" than "Welp, good try but ... no." So she sorta... creeps up on things instead of asking for them right out using Dressage Words. (I find this slightly twee and frustrating, but w/e.)
The reason we are not doing canter games is that ordinary canter needs to be less earthbound and forehand-y before we can play games in canter. I have some things to work on there. Walk and trot, tho, lots of room to play games there, and so we did.
no subject
Date: 2023-09-28 08:13 pm (UTC)