All day long I was watching the weather and hoping, hoping, hoping the weather would stay nice for my riding lesson. Clouds rolled in, but the rain held off as I pulled into the barn. There were girls out in the arena even as it started sprinkling a little bit. Nothing we couldn’t handle if it meant we could ride outside and do some jump courses.
The horses were out in the grass pasture, which meant a long walk to fetch Husky. Of course, the moment I got all the way out there, the rain started pouring down. Thunder started rumbling, and as I tacked up it just kept raining harder and harder. So, we were relegated to riding inside.
We’ve been working on lead changes over jumps so we can land on our proper lead when doing courses, so Leanne set up an exercise for us to practice that. It would have been a great lesson, other than the fact that it was now raining so hard that I couldn’t hear Leanne – even when she spoke into her speaker that projects her voice throughout the arena.
And Husky was just. Not. Having. It.
I can’t blame him! It was quite a storm outside and he was simply too nervous and tense to stick to our plan of working on lead changes. Instead, I had my work cut out for me just simply keeping Husky as relaxed as possible. After about 20 minutes, Leanne decided we should call it a day, and I was happy enough to dismount. Even though it wasn’t what we had hoped to do (and not our 2nd choice, either), it was a good opportunity to build Husky’s trust in me, and I felt that he did work hard to give me a good ride even though he was scared. I’m hopeful that this trust-building ride can help translate into jumping, and maybe he’ll be less likely to refuse scary jumps if he has more confidence in me.
To give you an idea of how hard it was raining: when I took Husky out to the pasture, I had to walk about 10 feet to the gate, open it, take off his halter, close the gate and sprint back inside. All in all, I was probably outside about 30 seconds, and I was so wet I could’ve just jumped in a pool. My hair was plastered to my head and my water-resistant jacket was soaked through. Fun times at the barn.
Centered in the Saddle 