![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
buy the book
Jan. 29th, 2007 03:31 pmMy Amazon shipment came today- my sis gave me a gift certificate and I got Reiner/Ingrid Klimke's "New Basic Training of the Young Horse" in hopeful preperation for a new horse- pre purchase is Wednesday. Keeping my fingers crossed. Also ordered Debbie McDonald's "Riding Through" because I heard it was good. I'm disappointed to find it's not just a little autobiography- looks like I got 2 textbooks, the Klimke hardcover and the McDonald paperback. Lots of nice pictures in "Riding Through" though. I thought it would be like "Taking up the Reins" or "My Horses, My Teachers". Oh well. I'll give it a whirl. I know you can't learn to ride from a book, but I do find some concepts can become more clear when explained from different perspectives or just when your mind is in a different place.
Fontana continues to improve- good ride on saturday. Glancing in the mirror, it looks like she's able to travel with her neck more arched and her body a bit more together - she's getting stronger and I think she likes this "dressage stuff". Oddly her right side was the one where she had difficulty bending- usually her left side is the stiff one. She was really good though- we did a lot of really forward trot to get her back swinging and her limbs warmed up, and did a decent job of not mowing down the other 2 riders (Josie and Bree). I worked on riding deeper in the corners and found it gave me more room- seeing the kids cut the corners 10m from the ends made me realize that even though it's not a huge space, we could be using it a lot better. It was touch and go for a moment as Valhalla and Fontana made eye contact, flattened their ears, and lunged for one another, but we kept them from going at each other and no one got hurt. The extra traffic was a good excuse to ask for more bends and to slow down and speed up within her gaits- I'm not really sure that collection and extension are really appropriate terms for this level, but at any rate it was a good exercise. Not to mention it made me keep my head up and look where we were going.
I got some reminders from Peggy to give more on the outside rein because I can tend to keep it too short, and other than that she didn't say much besides that the mare looked pretty good.
I'm so sick of winter though. It took 2.5 hours for Fontana to dry because she's not clipped- she was cool but wet and so she stood in the cross ties and dried VERY SLOWLY in spite of: the cooler, me fluffing her hair, and even rubbing her down with a towel. Maybe I'll bring a hair dryer next week. She's pretty calm- if the horses can stand being vacuamed, they can probably tolerate a hair dryer...
Fontana continues to improve- good ride on saturday. Glancing in the mirror, it looks like she's able to travel with her neck more arched and her body a bit more together - she's getting stronger and I think she likes this "dressage stuff". Oddly her right side was the one where she had difficulty bending- usually her left side is the stiff one. She was really good though- we did a lot of really forward trot to get her back swinging and her limbs warmed up, and did a decent job of not mowing down the other 2 riders (Josie and Bree). I worked on riding deeper in the corners and found it gave me more room- seeing the kids cut the corners 10m from the ends made me realize that even though it's not a huge space, we could be using it a lot better. It was touch and go for a moment as Valhalla and Fontana made eye contact, flattened their ears, and lunged for one another, but we kept them from going at each other and no one got hurt. The extra traffic was a good excuse to ask for more bends and to slow down and speed up within her gaits- I'm not really sure that collection and extension are really appropriate terms for this level, but at any rate it was a good exercise. Not to mention it made me keep my head up and look where we were going.
I got some reminders from Peggy to give more on the outside rein because I can tend to keep it too short, and other than that she didn't say much besides that the mare looked pretty good.
I'm so sick of winter though. It took 2.5 hours for Fontana to dry because she's not clipped- she was cool but wet and so she stood in the cross ties and dried VERY SLOWLY in spite of: the cooler, me fluffing her hair, and even rubbing her down with a towel. Maybe I'll bring a hair dryer next week. She's pretty calm- if the horses can stand being vacuamed, they can probably tolerate a hair dryer...
