A new first!

No, we haven't made a giant stride forward in our training, but after a good, although excruciatingly painful ride (for me*),  I decided it we should have a little fun. One of my fellow boarders JM was at the barn with me this evening. Since I wasn't alone, after our ride I jumped at the opportunity to strip Rose of her saddle and hop up...

BAREBACK!

She was such a good girl. Mostly she was perplexed as to what I was doing, but seemed content when she realized that all she had to do was walk and keep cooling down. Her back is super comfortable and it was so neat to actually feel her back muscles working. She was far more responsive to my seat sans saddle, which was fun to play with in terms of transitions. We did a little bit of sitting trot, but my abs couldn't take much more and I had to call an end to our ride. She was such a good girl and I was so pleased with her!


*Sore abs & everything else:
I woke up this morning from rolling over in my sleep which caused a lot of pain generated from my abs, legs, bum. The reason? I literally worked my bum off on Saturday. I had a lesson with my trainer on one of her school masters, Percy, and then also rode Rose afterward. Percy is a very cool horse. He's shown Grand Prix and I believe he is the horse that she won her gold medal on. The point of the lesson was to work on me, my aids, and my position. These are things that I struggle with when I have lessons on Rose, because it tends to be all about her. The hope is that a few lessons on Percy will help me get my fundamentals down. It was a great lesson, and I learned a ton. I also got to do something very cool...

PASSAGE!

Yea! It was definitely the coolest thing I've done on horseback in a long time/maybe ever...well except riding Rose bareback for the first time. Maybe it's a tie, but I'm thinking it would be a very rewarding day if Rose ever gets to the point where she could do passage and perhaps we could do it bareback too!

Happy trails and swooshing tails!