Oct 13 | Ride Report – If the Saddle Fits

I did not want to ride today.

Well, to be more accurate, I wanted to ride but I was a little less enthusiastic about the 5 am wake up, 40 minute drive in the dark and rush home to shower and get ready before work that it takes to make that happen during the week.

I didn’t sleep well last night and that created room in my brain for all the little things that I tell myself when I’m struggling to get to the barn.

I’m paying all of these bills for Elf, why am I doing that if I’m not going to ride?
What if there’s something going on with him and I miss it because I didn’t go ride?
I should go, it’s my me time…

And so on. I’m really, really good at arguing with myself.

But, I’d pulled out my breeches last night and I was dressed and ready in time, so I gave myself permission to go and see how I felt when I got there.

The 20 minute dressage ride

Like most work day rides, I needed to be relatively quick this morning.

The last week or so, Elf seems to have lost a bit of his top line – it could just be weight because our grass is essentially gone – and he felt a little stiff on Sunday. With a 19 year old horse, this is a constant spectrum so I am constantly tweaking and adjusting our rides to keep him comfortable.

Fortunately, this is a pretty consistent thing for Elf in the Fall. Late summer is always a little tough on him.

I knew I wanted to focus on activating his core and engaging his back, so I chose to use our EquiCore saddle pad and bands. I started using it a year or so ago – introducing it slowly by 5 minute intervals. It is just enough proprioception for Elf to make core engagement more consistent.

Once in the arena, we did 9 minutes of walk work: full arena figure eights across the diagonal asking him to really march forward on the diagonal, moving into a big 3 loop serpentine. At the walk, I have time to really focus on how I use my seat and leg to ask for the change of bend clearly (an ongoing challenge for me). I mixed in a couple 10m half circles to leg yields just as we hit 10 minutes. For the remaining 10 minutes, we repeated the same movements at the trot until Elf was moving forward freely . I played with asking for more lift in the trot – adding a little extra hover to how I post the trot, asking for a little more push but without an increase in speed. Elf is quite responsive to my seat and adjusting his trot to my posting. It is a lot of work for him though, especially with the bands on, so I let move in and out of it – asking during the center half circle of a serpentine and stretching or asking him to move out on the end half circles.

While I could still feel a bit of the stiffness that I noticed on Sunday, he worked out of it much quicker today and finished feeling strong, forward and working well.

With Texas summer temps finally easing, it was back into a flysheet for Elf today. We still have flies, and have recently experienced those incredibly annoying little gnats that love to pester horses by biting their stomachs. Elf gets hives from some of them so I’m trying to cut that off until it’s time to body clip and blanket.

Since I worked Elf when the horse’s are eating their breakfast hay, I tossed it out into his turnout to make up for the lack of grass we’re currently experiencing.

It was a gorgeous morning. We had a good ride. And I made it home in plenty of time for my first meeting.