Saturday, January 16, 2010

Pre-ride preparations




Each time I take Calico out, I go through a series of excercises to warm-up and prepare for riding. Today Stephan came out with our boy Philip. He was able to get a few new pictures for the blog. I know that as we forge ahead in our journey, the prep times will be shorter and the rides will be longer. Today, I spent about 45 minutes warming up and about 20 in the saddle. The big news is that we moved back to the arena for the first time since my fall. We really had to work on standing still while I mount up. She was much more responsive to the bit yesterday in the round pen, but I think overall we did well. Watch the transformation from wild bronc to relaxed pleasure horse. I have to admit, as I was walking her around I felt nervous and wondered how I was ever going to be ready to get out on the trail. We will do it just like we've done everything else, slow and steady.
This is just before our round penning session. Fresh and Fun.





She is really having fun with the dogs. I think she'd like to kill them.






Here we're doing some basic round-penning. I put a feed bag on the ground in her path that she had to manuever without coming in toward me.

In the last clip, you can see we moved to the arena. Stephan was busy with Philip, so he only got the last few moments of our ride, but I really did have a good time with her today.




1 comment:

  1. How wonderful to see you riding her!! I can see the trust spirit has in you. She is as beautiful as ever. It's been quite an adventure hasn't it, from a frisky two year old to a more compliant and willing 6 year old--(on Feb 2nd).

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