To ride dressage is to dance with your horse, equal partners in the delicate and sometimes difficult work of creating harmony and beauty.

Sunday, November 26, 2017

Achieving goals

November has been a great month. I'm getting to ride nearly every day, and feel blessed to do so each and every ride. The stirrups have stayed off my saddle for #NoStirrupNovember except for a couple rides down the lanes, when I thought it prudent to play it safe and be able to get back on if I should need to dismount for any reason. Lance has been great, though, so I did ride down through the woods on Friday (#optoutside) without stirrups. Wouldn't you know it; we encountered a very noisy Harley-Davidson that made Lance nervous so I hopped off, but there was a big rock nearby to use as a mounting block. (Even as a tall, spry teen, I was never able to swing/jump up onto the back of a 16hh horse from the ground!)
On our Friday ride I saw this BLOOMING rhododendron at someone's place!

And whether Lance thinks it's great or not, he has been working up a bit of sweat each ride. It seems to be helping, too; it has been a bit easier to buckle his girth the last couple of times. ;-)

3 comments:

thecrazysheeplady said...

Just when the weather and schedule started cooperating my pony is out with an abscess in a hind foot or both hind feet. Farrier coming back out today. Hopefully not another vet visit for xrays this afternoon. Sigh... Glad Lance is doing well!

Mary said...

Great news for you and Lance. I enjoy seeing your rides through his ears and get nostalgic for the northwest. (I do love the desert however)

After concentrated training in October, I took it pretty easy in November due to caring for my husband as he went through immunotherapy. Nick and I took a newbie rider and her Arabian out for their first real trail ride on Sunday. We had fun, and she learned that a trail ride does not have to follow an established trail :-)

Anonymous said...

I hope you're able to get in some good rides during this stretch of sunny weather.
Those blooming rhodies make me shudder. The past two days I've been hearing bird song that I normally attribute to springtime.