Dont worry be happy

Lately I feel like my life has been so overwhelmingly busy that its flying by and all I have to keep me grounded is my horseback riding. Its the one part of the day that feels like I can breath. For a long time, Tillie added to my stress with her non-stop injuries, high energy sass and explosions and just general worry. Finally, she is the one thing that is the glue getting me through the day.

Such a gorgeous evening to ride yesterday

With my last day at my current job rapidly approaching, Rolex trip right around the corner and a friends wedding in the not so distant future...I am scrambling just to get it all done. Not to mention some pretty exciting freelance work I am doing on a way cool horsey product Ill announce once I am allowed to!

Last year at Rolex

What's crazy is despite all this great stuff happening, I found myself fretting. Almost like I needed to ask permission from people to allow myself to be excited and be happy. I was raised in a large family where we almost always were taught to sorta stay neutral because it might upset a sibling that may not be having a great time and if we celebrated it might make them more sad. My parents were great in that way because they were sensitive to us all, but at the same time with there being so many of us, more than likely someone was always having a not so great day so the happy sibling had to find another outlet to express joy. (I am making my childhood sound terrible...it really wasnt and it was awesome).

Trail rides are becoming more relaxed and pleasant

I admitted this to my therapist who promptly shouted: "Girl, you have so much right now to be happy about and you SHOULD be! Don't feel bad about, you earned it." She's totally right...I know how the highs and lows work. The highs make it worth fighting through the lows and boy did I have some not all that long ago.

I have so many really cool and exciting things and its OK to be excited about them! I celebrate when others have their exciting things so why cant I do it for myself?

Can barely see it, but there are tiny fox ears hiding from us in the field

So I am working on it...and trying to be exciting without sounding braggy. I dont want to be that person that walks around saying how awesome life is, but, as my therapist said, I am allowed to be happy.

So with that said, I am excited to ride right now. I have a plan, I know our homework and I can confidently flat AND jump at home. That wasnt something I could always say and I am sure wont be...and Jumping at home without an instructor present is a fairly big step since in the past I was too nervous to attempt it.

A portion of our hack out/cool down

I got on yesterday interested to see how Tillie felt after the massage and boy was she super supple. I am super thrilled with how she went especially in her canter. I decided to go ahead and try a jump school with the plan of starting out low and working on getting the correct leads on landing as well as the timing through the corners...I also made a point to attempt to let me reins slip a little longer and allow Tillie to maintain a rhythm with a little less contact.

Jumps are in the process of a face lift and fresh paint! This is the height we finished at.

She did this so incredibly nicely and came right back if she did get excited or flat so we upped the jumps to dig in and do more work. The course that was set up is really fun and had a lot of options, so I left it and just set the jumps a bit higher and adjusted the distances in the lines for us since the one stride (pictured below) and the oxer line (pictured above) would have been WAY too tight.

I started off with the one stride line, bending the the upright skinny barrels, around to the 3-4 stride line (we rode it in 3) to finish on the red white and blue filler.

Tillie jumped them all soooo well and the goal was to do them all out of a more forward, truer 12ft canter stride and she did it beautifully. She knocked a few rails at first...the first one out of the one stride which I dont think she realized they went up that high plus I didnt have her canter big enough and the last fence of the course because of my error. Once I sat up and made sure I didnt drop her to that last fence she jumped it quite well.

These were set at a pretty decent height, most at novice height...my goal was to be able to feel like we could navigate them all confidently to prep for our first Novice early next month. (Yes its true, we entered our first novice event!!! eek!) I am thrilled that its exactly what happened, even over the skinny barrels!! Although that is still one jump that will be homework for us since she really gets tense through her body on the approach. She didnt wiggle up to it like she did the first time we did them a few months ago, but she still doenst quite trust the question yet. BUT we jumped them twice willingly!

Tillie is starting to understand this whole sport horse thing

I didnt push it more than that and quit while we ahead....she half halted so nicely through the turns and came out in a nice forward stride like I asked. We just felt so in tune and on the same page which felt so incredible. What was even more awesome was she was able to go right back to dressage mode and relax which in the past has not been achievable.

To cool out I decided to hack out on the trails through the woods so we could hit some of the hills and get some walking conditioning in. Tillie was way more relaxed and confident than shes ever been and good thing too because we came across some illegal dirt bikers. Tillie flicked her head around a bit in protest and wasnt so sure about them but she kept her head on and I was so proud of her.

Being able to take her out for conditioning like that has been a goal of mine and its nice to feel like I can start trusting her more!

So if anyone read all that, kudos!! And my motto for the day. Dont worry be happy!!!

The dreaded goals projection post

I have been sort of putting off writing this post because I was so off base in my goals for last year, that I really worry that I can't set realistic goals for us on either end of the spectrum. I dont want to set any too easy but dont want to set them so they are unattainable like I did this year.

Felt like we had more rides like this then rides without

This last year with Tillie has been one that has felt extremely frustrating for a number of reasons...in hindsight I now see it was a year of tremendous growth, but it hasnt really caught up to me until recently ever since starting lessons with P. Check out my year in review post here.

Many days I would repeat "I love my pony" to remind myself why I do this.

I learned this year that I hold myself to the standards of a professional rider and finally learned how ridiculous that is within the last two months. Since letting some of that pressure go, I have found I can breath a little more, laugh at our mistakes and it certainly has seemed to allow some stars to start aligning for us.

Who knew I could actually smile when riding?

I am so thankful for the new horse friends I have gained this year...I know I had a lot of lows of really beating myself up and questioned whether or not Tillie was the right fit for me. It was a lonely place made not so lonely by words of encouragement insisting I keep trying and not to give up.

Well here goes....my best attempt to outline goals for 2o16:

1. Get a stronger half halt off my seat
2. Get over my fear of down banks and riding down hills
3. Show in at least 1 dressage show
4. Show in at least 2 jumper shows
5. Show in at least 5 eventing ST (no matter what level) 
6. XC school more and have a horse that doesnt take off after or between fences 
7. Try to even out my crookedness issues
8. Release more over fences
9. Ride more geometrically/planned in training rides
10. Gallop Tillie at home in the field without losing our minds
11. Get BN to where all three phases include a horse that is listening and I feel confident
12. Move up to Novice
13. Trail ride more

Horse eating gremlins are everywhere

Wednesdays ride was the ride I like to call "overcome with the fear of horse eating gremlins." To be fair Tillie was wonderful in the ring...it was just our experiences when we left the ring that made this ride a bit more interesting.

Trying to hold on to the simple things in life, like a pretty sunset even if our ride wasnt stellar

Wednesday I really had to talk myself into going to ride. I just was not feeling motivated, but I am glad I did go. Despite there being lessons going on with some questionable steering, Tillie was pretty focused. Not quite as soft or supple as I would like, but she would give my some lengthening of her neck without losing her tempo or the connection!

BOT mesh sheet before and after rides = a happy relaxed Tillie

I did some canter work pushing the canter forward and then asking her to back off again without using any hand. As hard as that was to do, I was really impressed with how well she did it and without sass UNTIL the lesson with the children left and she noticed Isabelle (You'll often see her in Emma's blog) being long lined in the round pen next to the ring. She locked her side eye on her and began bracing on the right rein...even though we had been working past Isabelle the entire time without problems at this point...and when I did a check and balance on it she did a bit of a head toss before settling down.

The end of our trail ride adventure...where Tillie thought everything would eat her

 I made her do it one more time at the same end of the ring to establish it is possible when other horses are around and then decided to push my luck and take her on a cool down walk through the woods. After all, most days I get there after work so its too dark to go and I am usually too chicken to alone. BUT Tillie does seem to look to me more when we are without other horses and riders and I figured she needs to do this alone if we ever are going to improve and try conditioning one of these days.

She was a bit tense and looky at deer, fox, random leaves which I all scolded her slightly reminding her these things live with her in her pasture every day (Yes literally the deer come in her field every night). She kept it together until we came upon Gremlin Mountain.

I call it that because every time I have ridden this ravine/hill down to the stream crossing no matter which direction (ascending or descending) every horse, the seasoned and the green, just do not seem to like it. So we all have joked there must be horse eating gremlins down there we humans cant see...

After a few rears and spins without any bolting (see its the simple things) I got the mare down the hill and across the stream without any more trouble.

Yay for progress!