A horse is a horse, of course, of course.

Today's post is all about my horsie! So if you're not interested, you can click the Back button now, no harm, no foul.

First up: I rode today!! Actually, I rode last night, too, but it was kind of half-assed because there were jumping lessons going on, as well as a bunch of other people riding so it was crowded and chaotic, and T was too busy being pissy about that to get any real work done.

So anyway. I rode today!! And, unlike last night, the boy was SO GOOD. I let my sister Britt boss us around (I get so much more done when I have someone watching from the ground and telling me what to do!) and we worked on stretching through his whole back at the walk, and then on his trot transitions.

(Okay, quick lesson for y'all, because otherwise this post will be totally pictureless, and how boring is that? Anway. T's original training was in Saddleseat, which looks like this:


And now we've switched gears to Dressage, which looks like this.

Disclaimer: Neither of those pictures is me or my horse.

Notice how the first horse picks his feet and knees up while the second one reaches forward. Same with their heads. I apologize if I'm dumbing this down TOO much.)

Anyway. We worked on the trot transitions, and finally figured out how to get him to sort of roll into the trot, instead of feeling like he has to shoot forward at 90 miles an hour the way he was originally trained to do. It was quite lovely once we got it worked out! We did just a touch of overbending and counterbending because he is SO tense in his left jaw, neck and shoulder, but mostly it was walk, get relaxed, tense up, get relaxed, cue trot, tense up, walk, get relaxed, cue trot - good boy! for 45 minutes.

Best of all, I think my Saddle Search Saga is finally at an end. I think I've finally found a saddle-and-pad combination that's going to work for us for a while. (You all should be glad I didn't have a blog earlier this fall/winter while that was all going on, trust me. It would've been Bitching About The Saddle, day and night. Yawn.)

Edit: OH!! How could I have forgotten? MY HALF CHAPS CAME TODAY! Before any of y'all start getting the wrong idea, THESE are my half chaps:
They are basically....leather leg warmers that you wear over short boots, instead of wearing tall riding boots. Why would someone do this, you ask? Why not just wear tall boots? Because a quality pair of tall boots is going to run you $3-500, more if you have to have them custom made like I would due to my freakishly large calves. Half chaps generally run $40-80. Mine were $90, again because I had to track them down in "plus size."

ANYWAY. They came today, and I am IN. LOVE. The leather is gorgeous and the construction is superior. Unfortunately, they are too big and I'm going to have to exchange them. Now, I know I can't complain too much about having to go down a size, but it means it'll be another two weeks before I can actually ride in them. Woe is me. ;o)