Photo by Margaret Chant and edited by Jessica Metropulos

Thursday, March 12, 2009

A Nice Low-Key Day

Okay, so I'm really confused about this whole weather thing, here. It is March 12th, daylight savings has begun, and for the past week and a half, it has not been under 32 degrees, hardly, except apparently the past 2 days. The past two days, it's been 15ish degrees. Now, I don't know if you've ever experienced 15 degrees in March,but it's really bizarre. The ground wants to be warm. The sun wants to be warm. It feels warm coming from those two areas, and yet the air temperature is FRIGID, stubbornly holding onto the fact that it's still technically winter for another 9 days. Ah well, melt starts again tomorrow, and I'll be out playing in it!

Anyway, I didn't do a whole lot today because the footing is really bad (frozen manure and icy patches)but Prin and I toddled around and did some play with being particular in the walk. We both had a blast, surprisingly enough, (this whole attitude shift from negative nit-picky to positive particular is doing us wonders!) and even though I didn't ride for more than 20 minutes I bet, we had a ton of fun. Prin was SUPER light, and her shoulders were moving over SO fluidly!

It actually caused me to think back to my course, when we were first struggling with isolating and moving the shoulders over. I had spent the better part of all afternoon one day trying not to lose my patience, smack my horse with inappropriate phase 4's, or yell at Avery, who was trying to help me with it. That was not a pleasant afternoon at all, but I'm glad I persisted with it. Days like today remind me of how worth it it was. :) I can just feel our finesse developing in little sessions like that.

Oh, on a side-note about finesse, I recently recieved Walter Zettl's book "Dressage in Harmony" as a late Xmas gift from my friend Sarah. I've only just paged through it a little, but HOLY COW the man knows his stuff. It's a really thick book, probably about 300-400 pages, and every page is packed full of thorough, fantastic information, as well as drawings of maneuvers, exercises, theory, and troubleshooting. "From Basic to Grand Prix" is the subtitle, and it really doesn't do the amount of information justice. It really delves into the horsemanship and horsenality aspect (minus PNH references, of course) I can hardly wait to have good footing again, I'm thrilled to give the stuff a try :) I'll keep you posted on how that goes!

Anyway, time for dinner. Savvy on!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The southerner in me laughs at your weather. The low this week is 40 and I think that's freezing now :) Two months ago, that would have been toasty. Mwahahahahahaha.

Glad you got your book, too! :D

Fran said...

You are no southerner in my book, I lived in Florida this year :P It was almost 90* the last day I was there, I don't think even got to 60 at night...go on and try to make me jealous <_< >_> hehehehe

And yes, I do love my book, thank you my dahling :D