Bareback

Shows up position issues.  Gaynor came to be an eye on the ground and I was relaxed by the end very pleas5.

The idea is to not only improve my riding but also to be able to ride without wrestling with poorly fitting saddle he's objecting to

stuck to the bareback pad

i got brave and tried it. i wasn't that stable on board, although did make it round to the arena, but found i couldn't get off again!  i was, in fact, stuck to the pad - which is suede seated, and i have sticky bum breeches....

do!

had to go back round to the mounting block and line up next to it so i could put the foot down and provide some traction for myself!

and, of course, need to work on positoin to get stability back....

fighting

resulting in bite on neck and swelling :-(

he woke up!

he'd been asleep for G on Sunday and wasn't that awake yesterday - we think lack of sleep caused by rain, of which there'd been a fair bit...

so today he felt more lively and more interested
and I got brave and went out on my own and didn't get nervous,  i was very pleased with myself.

tired lad....

but not because of work done, more because he's full of the new grass they were allowed on to last night, and possibly because it's been raining.....

the first pic is today - he really couldn't be bothered to move AT ALL, just stood there.....

the second was from last night, after we'd done a little bit of in hand work....

sunday and today not so good...

Gaynor managed to totally knack her shoulder overdoing the gardening....

I managed to seize everything up by doing too much gardening/car washing yesterday combined with standing on a hill today a the Zetland point to point, so i was seized up this evening - got on, and knew i shouldn't have done - and so did he!  so got off again. i could barely move a muscle...

more big grins

in the arena this afternoon.   having set up the saddle correctly, we kept going lots of trot work, lots of circles, walk/trot transitions, i even tried a SI (failed), a leg yield in walk (succeeded) and so on, all with another lass in there - it may be a small arena, but when you're paying attention to each other, it works.... a couple of times you'd have thought we'd been rehearsing something symmetrically posh!  purely by accident.....he worked hard, and i didn't which is also good.

much better than yesterday, when i failed to do the girth up properly and in any event, having sat wrongly at the office, was in pain, and in more pain by the end!  shouldn't have got on, but hey, 10 minues in walk is better than nothing at all....

was hoping for a lesson today, but i was the only one who said "yes" to the proposal and no point her coming from Manchester for 1...