Asking too much too fast

I saw Memphis last night and did ride. I'm a little perturbed that he refuses to rack in the arena and wants to only skip to various ways of pacing. I'm not happy. BUT right now I'm working on reining with him not so much what gait he is in.

I can also proudly say that I am over my fear on him. When I first started riding him again in August I was terrified to go over a walk with him. Last night he had some serious SPEED going and I paid no attention to it. The only thing I want to get done is reining work. I want him to get out of direct reining. This is a two-fold approach for me because A.) I'm lazy and B.) it makes trail riding more enjoyable for me.

It's boring mundane work. Ask with the leg first, then ask with the rein on the neck, then ask with direct reining.

I'll dumb all this down a little. Leg aids with a horse are many many things. They tell a horse to go forward, tell a horse to move over, tell a horse to change a gait, or a whole list of things that I don't even know about. (can we say dressage anyone?) Right now Memphis only knows that legs mean go. A small tap on his side with my heel will make him move forward. Another tap and he speeds up. A good tap can really make him bolt.

Your calf is the next step up from your foot telling the horse to do something. This in my line of riding tells the horse to move over. (later it will help with switching gaits, but for now its move over) I use my legs to help "push" Memphis the direction I want him to go. So if I want him to go right, I'm going to push with my calf on his left side.

Later in this I am going to finesse this and use it for a tool called sidepassing which means that he will move laterally over for me (that's the best word I can come up with) but for the moment it just means go right or left.

Neck reining is much like the leg aids but much more refined. It's just lay the reins on one or the other side of a horse's neck to tell them to go whichever direction. So if I want him to go right then I lay the left reins on his left side of his neck.

Direct reining is just that. I want him to go right then I pull on the right rein. I directly tell him what I want him to do. This is cumbersome on trails as what I'm wanting is a relaxed ride, not to constantly be in a two handed riding position to ride.

So this is all I'm doing right now. Him and I got a walk down to a science. Now we are moving to reining. This could take a few weeks before it's perfect and we move onto the next lesson which will be more complicated leg aids. Then we are going to move back down to gaiting.

I started out wanting to work on gaiting first but that started to fall apart when I realized I was wanting more complicated things than Memphis knew how to do. So I've had to back track on what I wanted and start more with the basics.

Wow this is longer than I wanted.

Short update

I realize that I haven't posted on here a whole lot lately. That has a lot to do with just life always getting in my way. Silly life trying to make my adult life busy!

I'm in a precious balance right now of time management and absolute chaos. Sometimes I just want to say eff it all and sit down and do nothing. The problem with that though is that nothing gets done if I do that. So, I have to somehow find the motivation to keep moving forward. Which, I will admit, right now is beyond hard. Hell, last week we had two days of eating dinner while standing looking at each other.

I know I'm just bitching a little but it's all I can do. This weekend is already chock full of things to do. I hate that. Oh well.. enough bitching...

Lucille is growing like a weed and she is quite the happy baby. I can't believe she is almost 8 months old! That's 4 more months of buying formula and then she's onto pure solid food. That is absolutely insane to me. She's crawling around now so now I have to keep my floors extra clean (add that to my list of things I must do at least 4-5 times a week) and I gotta make sure her two retarded brothers don't step on her.

Memphis is doing just fine. Rode on Sunday for the first time in October. Was nice. He has such a big motor but I did notice some tail swishing at his wanna be refusals. I rode in split reins this time around so I could back up my commands if needed. I only needed to show him once.

My seat is still not where I want it to be, but that will come back with time. I feel bad for Memphis as I know he has to be like "mom what are you doing up there!". I'm back to where I was at the end of my lesson days, but my seat isn't as secure as it was right before I got pregnant and I was riding a few times a week. Oh well, haven't fallen off *yet*. (I know I just somehow doomed myself in the eyes of the horse gods who are laughing at me right now)

Brought my saddle with me again today. Plan on getting the poles set up in the arena and doing some more leg work and neck reining in. He is starting to put it all together. It's slow moving but he is learning. That's all I can ask of him. It's boring mundane work... push with leg, neck rein, then direct rein. I'd like to just neck rein or just my legs to guide him and get away from direct reining.

My big dumb idiot that is actually quite smart!

Long time no post

I've been under the weather lately so no posts from me. Oh well. Haven't seen Memphis in about 2 weeks. How sad is that??!!

Anywho, I'm still getting the message out somewhere. :D Even if my early methods were a little .. erm.. interesting... people seem to still be reading this blog. Hot dog I might be onto something. ha!

I had a mom tell me tonight that she was analyzing her daughter riding a horse. She was going over everything that I preach on as far as stirrups, helmet, horse, and safety.

Guess I'm getting somewhere!

That's all I have for today.