Take and Give

Had a lesson yesterday with Tia and while it started out good, we hit a bit of a bump towards the end of lesson. We worked over some solid 3' fences before disaster struck. It was mostly me picking at her and her getting mad at me.  My main problem is when I'm not sure of the distance I want to hold and mess with their mouths, and that never works.

We were going to a giant  3'3" oxer on a short diagonal off the right, Tia's hard side.  She wants to over bend and bulge thru the turn, thus throwing our distance off.  At first I was over correcting a little too much and holding her back resulting in a couple horribly short distances to the oxer.  Thank goodness Tia's so point and shoot that she'll just go from anywhere!  Jen wanted me to just let go and ride her forward to the fence but when I tried we felt so crooked and strung out I pulled her off the fence.  At that point Tia and I got into a little tug-of-war with her just wanting to go to the fence and me not.  When she gets mad, she hops up with her front end and has a pogo stick like canter.  It kind of reminded me of Phoenix when he was younger, if I picked too much at him he would suck back and have this itty bitty canter that went no where.

We took a walk break while Jen moved the fence down to a vertical and then went and worked on just having a nice rhythm and going to the fence.  It took a few tries, but once I figured out that all I needed to do was check her in the corner then relax and not touch her mouth, and was able to relax enough to let it happen, it went really well. The oxer went back up, but at 2'9" and we did it pretty well a few times.  Why is letting go so hard!?

Once we figured it out

Today I was going to do a light hack with Tia just to let her move around a bit.  I've started wearing my tall boots in preparation for the show and as I was zipping them up the zipper tab on my left boot broke.  It was about 90% up so I could ride in them, but I wasn't sure I could get them off.  Tia and I did about 15mins in the arena then headed out to the field for another 30mins of just walking.  She's pretty good by herself, as long as she could still see the other horses.  If we went too far out she'd try to turn back and head home.  Once we got back I was able to stick one finger inside my boot and work the zipper down so I could get it off.  There going to the boot repair guy as soon as I get off work!

They've lasted 7 years without a problem. Sadness.