Lately, I’ve been feeling really confident, riding Velvet.\u00a0 During the last two group lessons, I did not touch the reins.\u00a0 I steered her with my body and legs.\u00a0 I also carry two carrot sticks.\u00a0 These are 3′ long extensions of my arms.\u00a0 They are fiberglass and lightweight.\u00a0 If Velvet doesn’t pay attention to my eyes, belly button, legs, then the carrot sticks are used.\u00a0 Carrot stick comes to the right side of the head means turn right and vice versa with left.\u00a0 Crossed carrot sticks in front of the horses head means stop.\u00a0 We’ve been practicing with carrot sticks for years.\u00a0 Don’t try this at home; we are professional carrot stick users!<\/p>\n
So, I’ve been pretty proud of Velvet and me.<\/p>\n
Tonight at the group lesson, we had a beginning rider on a student horse, a new student riding an American Saddlebred for the 1st time in a group lesson, and an advanced student riding her fairly new horse…plus me.\u00a0 We always have themes in the group lessons.\u00a0 This month has been dubbed emotional fitness theme.<\/p>\n
Jenny looked around at all of us and told us what we would be working on tonight.\u00a0 She left me to last. “Hmmm, what should you and Velvet work on<\/em>?” she said.\u00a0 Feeling pretty darn cocky, I said, “There’s nothing that you can have me do that will make me nervous or scared.\u00a0 We can do it all…except maybe ride bridleless.<\/em>” “Hmmm<\/em>,” Jenny said. One thing to learn about\u00a0 She had me ride Velvet on the wall just holding my carrot sticks.\u00a0 She asked me to flat foot walk, stop and back without touching the reins. We did fine.<\/p>\n She walked over to where we were resting on the wall.\u00a0 She reached up to Velvet’s head and took the bridle off Velvet’s head. Velvet was wearing her rope halter too.\u00a0 Jenny took that off too, “It will look better without the halter. All you will see in front of you is that bare head<\/em>.”\u00a0 She looked at me and asked, “What have you been doing that you need the bridle<\/em>?”<\/p>\n I really couldn’t think of any reason that I needed the bridle.\u00a0 Of course, I was in a weakened shock state as I looked at that naked head up there.\u00a0 I shook my head no and out quivered “nothing”.<\/em><\/p>\n “You can’t scream out loud,”<\/em><\/strong> she said and left us on the wall.\u00a0 I thought to myself,” I wouldn’t want to scream out loud.\u00a0 Velvet might get upset<\/em>”<\/p>\n Jenny was nice and let us walk for a while. Velvet responded to my weight shift to stop.\u00a0 She responded nicely to my body and then legs to make turns. I started to relax. HAY, this isn’t too bad.\u00a0 Ha, little did I know what the evening would really be like!<\/p>\n The stakes were upped.\u00a0 I had to at least flat foot walk or fox trot around the arena.\u00a0 We had to stop every now and then with the others, back up and then turn on the hindquarters and then forequarters in a 180.\u00a0 I discovered that I needed to be at a stop to communicate this wishing to Velvet.<\/p>\n The stakes were upped again.\u00a0 Jenny had placed two small jumps back-to-back…about 1 foot…at one shortened end of the arena.\u00a0 Instead of going around on the wall, we had to cut the jump end short and go over those small jumps. Sometimes we hopped over them.\u00a0 Other times we just hard trotted over them!\u00a0 My carrot sticks became my counter balance weights.\u00a0 We probably looked like a long armed flapping scarecrow.\u00a0 We had to dodge the nervous American Saddlebred, the beginning student that had a hard time making the lesson horse trot and the advanced student who had to do a full circle with indirect rein every time the horse left the wall! I could feel my emotional fitness in my stomach.\u00a0 My emotional fitness fluttered.<\/p>\n It was the other students’ turn to go over the jumps.\u00a0 I got to return to the wall. But wait, Jenny upped my emotional fitness again. I had to canter.\u00a0 We did darn well. Instead of dodging some of the other horses in the arena, I stopped.\u00a0 I was proud of being able to stop.\u00a0 Jenny kept stating that I could have missed that particular horse or horses by steering around them.\u00a0 But, my emotional fitness was at the edge.\u00a0 The fluttering left the stomach and came right up to my mouth.<\/p>\n Every time Jenny allowed us to stop and rest for a few minutes, I started getting misty-eyed, just thinking about riding my wonderful horse without anything on her head.\u00a0 What a rush!<\/p>\n My next challenge was to canter on the wall, cut through the middle, drop to a trot and canter the other direction.\u00a0 This is called drop-to-a-trot lead changes.\u00a0 Do you think that Jenny had all those other horses stand out of the way somewhere?\u00a0 I would have wished that. Instead, they were all over the arena concentrating on what Jenny was telling them.\u00a0 They didn’t seem to realize that they were in mortal danger of being run over by a galloping horse with a nude head.\u00a0 My emotional fitness left my body and sank into the arena dirt.<\/p>\n I survived. We got to rest, and we thought, stop for the night.\u00a0 But out on the wall we went..\u00a0 We continued on the wall mostly doing the flat foot walk, but upping every now and then to a fox trot.\u00a0 Occasionally, we had to canter.\u00a0 One time, Velvet got going pretty fast.\u00a0 She was galloping and having a grand time.\u00a0 Her brain had shifted to the emotional right side and she didn’t “hear” my seat praying for her to slow down.\u00a0 She did listen to the carrot sticks and slowed right down into a flat foot walk.<\/p>\n During this evening, I didn’t often have to use the carrot sticks.\u00a0 She paid attention to all the body aides…even while stopping, backing and turning.<\/p>\n I was so proud of and grateful to Velvet at the end of a very long hour.\u00a0 This was an amazing, absolutely amazing feeling.\u00a0 Jenny sezs we’ll being doing a lot more of it!!!<\/p>\n The final goal is to ride bareback and bridleless at walk, flat foot walk, canter, stop and back…only my body for communication!\u00a0 The carrot sticks are a tool to help us get to our goal. Next step will be to use only the 6 foot rope around her neck.\u00a0 YEE HAW!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lately, I’ve been feeling really confident, riding Velvet.\u00a0 During the last two group lessons, I did not touch the reins.\u00a0 I steered her with my body and legs.\u00a0 I also carry two carrot sticks.\u00a0 These are 3′ long extensions of my arms.\u00a0 They are fiberglass and lightweight.\u00a0 If Velvet doesn’t pay attention to my eyes, belly button, legs, then the carrot sticks are used.\u00a0 Carrot stick comes to the right side of the head means turn right and vice versa with left.\u00a0 Crossed carrot sticks in front of the horses…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[28,4,120],"class_list":["post-585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-velvet","tag-bridleless","tag-missouri-fox-trotter","tag-velvet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=585"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":588,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585\/revisions\/588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nJenny is that she pushes your emotional fitness, and she doesn’t let challenges pass her by.\u00a0<\/p>\n