Saturday, February 23, 2008

a visitor - a good day! video to follow


my friend natasha, who's a much better rider than me (she says not, but she is....has several more horses to ride regularly and trains with, inter alia, the bartles at YRC) came up to ride Molly today at my invitation, we talk about molly all the time and the troubles i have so i said, come up and get on.

so she did.

There is a load of video but it will take forever to up load (broadband? fast? not here!) and i will put it on when it's ready. We also have some video of me, but it's totally awful, for private viewing only (i was doing too much, got trot when i didn't want it, didn't have a bra on....dreadful!) Plus, I hadn't realised I'd shortened the reins up too much again .... and we shouldn't have been trotting of course! this was just after I'd got on so not really got warmed up (Gaynor had my camera to take photos of Charlie's sarcoid for the vet ....and before she went off to do that, decided to video me!)

So, 20 metre circles in walk working on getting her to accept the bit and work through etc - Molly threw her toys out a bit early on, but unfortunatley at that point I only had the mobile phone and the video of it is fairly dire....gaynor had my camera! My heart was in my mouth somewhat, but natasha got her through that and got her working nicely. every now and again molly planted in her favourite way, and Natasha showed me a good way to get her out of it without it getting into overload, which i did video and will put up, it was clever (one of Max's ... - move the head side to side). She was working really well for about 5 minutes, then would plant, then be pushed out of it, and so on ....but by the finish was really smooth and accepting changes of rein without going tense again. At one point she did a really nice leg yield, which i managed to miss with the video (i was conserving battery - new battery in, and by 3/4 hour no battery left...ggrrhh)

so you've got that to look forward to, and i'm reminded that less is more....

and we had our hair done this morning, 3 hours in the hairdressers (colour) - would only have been 2, but hairdresser decided allison needed her highlights doing after all (as well as her roots...) ggrrhh - but i read a lot of podhajsky whilst we were there, so it wasn't wasted time!

oh - but one not so good thing that i could see from being on the ground - the saddle moves slightly laterally on molly's back, not a huge amount, but enough to be noticeable! boo hoo..... :-(

3 comments:

Jean said...

Always good to have someone else's opinion from the saddle.

I do know the planting too well as it has been Tucker's specaility. The head thing doesn't work with him, so you are one up on me. HOWEVER, with the 1. ulcer medication, 2. Adequan for his hocks, 3. low carbohydrate/sugar feed, he seems to be quite a happy camper of late, once more convincing me most of the training problems we have stem from physical issues.

As we've said, it's going to take Molly a while to get over past problems, but it sounds as if slowly, but surely, she's getting there. Looking forward to the videos. It will be nice to see her going.

cptrayes said...

She's looking well Claier - but a rather unconventional clip ;-~???

C

Claire said...

yup, unconventional but it works! did it with a wahl pro trimmer and it was the first time i'd ever clipped myself...next year i might do a proper job, we'll see...