I love Saturdays. Saturday mornings at the barn are my favorite. I get to the barn around 9:15 which leaves me plenty of time to feed Alfie his pre-ride meal, groom and tack him. My trainer is in high demand on the weekends so being her first lesson I like to start on time.
The mornings at the barn are quiet. Most of the other boarders come later in the day so the peacefulness is welcomed, especially after a crazy busy week at work.
I pull into the barn and am greeted by 2 of our barn managers dogs, Cadence and Future. They both love their Aunty Judy and I love them bunches.
I go up to Alfie’s field, and he promptly greets me at the gate. The fact that he recognizes me still tickles me every time.
As I’m grooming my Alfie, listening to him eat his hydro hay, my mind and body completely relax. The stresses of the week melt away. This is my personal heaven.
We approach the mounting block, I get him all lined up, and look at that, he stands. His record now is 15 rides in a row! My fingers and toes are crossed that this behavior continues.
I warm him up and we decide that part of our lesson is going to be working on the intro dressage test I did earlier in the week with Martini, although for Alfie it will be done at the walk.
Before we attempt the test, we work on our circles, shoulder fore, haunches in, and Alfie is doing great going to the left but he’s stiff on his ride side, so we focus on circles to help get him bending. Needless to say, we did a lot of circles today.
There was a pretty big breakthrough with him with his stopping. You’ve heard me say Alfie doesn’t have the best of brakes, lol. But we’ve been working on that and he is much better at it now. When he is stopped we’ve been working on getting him to round his frame and bend his head down slightly seeking the contact of the bit. Today, he did it. He rounded and was looking for the contact without me asking him to. This was HUGE for him!!!
We ended our lesson with the dressage test. Some of our circles were round but ended up being oblong shaped, that’s ok, we just repeated the circles until we got it right. We completed the test, all at a walk, and man, he rocked it today.
After we were done, I did our stretching exercises, followed by a nice neck massage. By the time I was done, he was bending very easily to the right.
This week was a busy and stressful one for me. The minute I park my car and head into the barn, all the stresses of the world truly do leave.
While Alfie enjoyed his afternoon nap, I watched some of the other students and their lessons. Another amazing horsey Saturday.
Confessions of an Equestrianoholic 