Riding Recap: 2/22 – 3/7

Another two week grouping due to the cold weather.

Sunday, February 22nd

• 41 degrees, talk about a heat wave! After a short school in the indoor with two of the other boarders, we ventured outside into the snow to finish off because it was beautiful out. We kept it short and sweet.

Monday, February 23rd – BCET Lesson

• Too cold to lesson and too cold to ride. WAH.

Tuesday, February 24th

• It was pretty chilly again today so I just went up and free lunged Ax quickly before stuffing him back into his blankies.

Wednesday, February 25th – BCET Lesson

• I rode Ax’s mini me, Oscar, in my team lesson. We did a basic warm up with a few courses at the end. Unfortunately, I ended up running out of time before I had to leave for class so I only hopped on Ax bareback for a few minutes.

Thursday, February 26th

• Cold. Cold. Cold.

Friday, February 27th – BCET Practice

• First practice of the season and it was FREEZING at 6:30 AM. I am not exaggerating, my toes were WHITE when I took my boots off. We were all ice cubes by the time we finished so instead of riding Ax, I went with a couple of teammates to SmartPak. I had to exchange a blanket and picked up shims for my Ogilvy and an engraved halter plate. I did go back to the barn later to change his blankets and groom him.

Saturday, February 28th – IHSA Show

• First IHSA show of this semester and my first Open Flat class. It was…a rough day. I ended up with a refusal over fences that was entirely my fault and got lucky with a fourth place. My flat draw was the probably the worst draw of the class and I didn’t place. A disappointing day for me, but the rest of the team did really well and the team ended up fourth overall. Fun fact: the show was a total of 17 hours long in teen temperatures.

Sunday, March 1st

• Talk about a horse show hangover. I think I rode Ax for a total of twenty minutes because I was so exhausted. Not that I think he really minded.

Monday, March 2nd – BCET Lesson

• I rode Oscar again in my lesson where we focused on practicing equitation tests to prep for regionals next month. Test one was: walk out of the line up, posting trot to F, perform a figure of eight with a halt at the beginning, left lead canter to F, counter canter to M, halt, perform a turn on the forehand, right lead canter to A, walk and perform a turn on the haunches, walk back to the lineup. After doing that a few times to clean up a few sloppy spots (I love to duck when we pick up the counter canter and Oscar was struggling with the turn on the haunches), we were given the test of a 60 second demonstration ride. This is when it is up to the rider to show off what they feel is strongest with their horse. I had already figured out that Oscar had an almost-perfect turn on the haunches and his canter was a little steadier than his canter (he gets a little hoppy at the trot going away from his friends), so I chose to walk out of the lineup, sit trot down the center line, perform a turn on the forehand, perform a figure of eight at the canter with a simple change of lead (he can do a flying but he gets a little anticipatory about the whole thing), halt, and sit trot back to the lineup.

• By the time I had taken care of Oscar and tacked up Ax, another lesson was beginning so I just jumped into it and did more eq tests with the Meatball. We mostly did the same stuff as the first lesson with a little variations depending on the horse plus a half an hour of no stirrup warm up. I wish that that was the hardest part, but I chose not to wear spurs so Ax will respect my leg more and my legs were ready to fall off. I did get lucky and a got a perfect, clean lead change though. It is safe to say that I was exhausted after this day.

Tuesday, March 3rd

• No barn for me today. After recovering from the show, I had a ton of work to catch up on. Sometimes homework comes before ponies.

Wednesday, March 4th – BCET Lesson

• MY OLD FAVORITE SCHOOL PONY CAME BACK! Tango (Mustang Sally) was definitely one of my favorite Becker horses before she was leased out this summer and stayed for the first semester. She came back a little rusty, but nothing bad and we mainly worked on tuning her back up for the school program.
• I finished my lesson with just enough time to do a quick hack on Ax. I didn’t really work on anything, just took him out to move him around.

Thursday, March 5th

• All the riding this week was catching up with me. I went to the barn just long enough to work and check on Ax.

Friday, March 6th – BCET Practice

• Round two of practice and it was definitely warmer than last Friday. I ended up on Tango again and remembered why I loved jumping her so much. She will jump any fence, from any distance you bring her to, no matter what you’re doing, talk about a life saver!
• Ax got his feet done and was NOT happy about being kept inside while we waited for the farrier to arrive, so I gave him the rest of the day off to do nothing but be a grumpybutt.

Saturday, March 7th

• A free day? WHAT? With nothing to do today but get ready for the show and pack for spring break, I ended up at the barn for a good chunk of the day. It was gorgeous outside and the barn was empty except for weekend staff so I basically had the whole place to myself. I stuck to some flat exercises and figures with Ax and left it at that.

-TC