Friday (F)otos

The same generous friend that provided accompaniment & photos from last week also snapped some sneaky awesome shots as i rode the monsters yesterday. She caught me as i finished with Kika & then started with Nancy.
Her phone takes much better photos than mine...or maybe it's more to do with the person taking the  pictures lolz!

She's too BTV & awkward mouth breathing moment happening but I love how she is almost stepping into her tracks! This rarely happens with "I-prefer-not-to-exert-myself" Kika

I started with K as Nancy spun on the walker. Kika initially surprised me by being a very good girl and not freaking out about new lighter sand that had been added to random spots in the arena (you can see it's much lighter in the background of above photo). I figured she'd freak about it & actually think she might have done had an adorable rehabbing pony not joined us in the arena for lunging.

Erugh i look like a giant on her &
my stirrups look miles too short!

However the different sand was deeper/softer than the "old" sand and as such kind of upset princess prissy pants and she tried to toss the toys out of the pram a couple times but we managed to keep things together somewhat. I stuck to walk/trot work as she has struggled recently with canter work under saddle and lunging, although she did work really smoothly on the lunge on Tuesday so am playing it by ear on that front for the moment and taking each day as it comes.

We still have our #awks moments

Our trot work was quite ropey on our collective bad rein (what came first the chicken or the egg), but we chipped away at it and with lots of transitions and changes of rein we got some nicer balanced work than i thought we would at the start of the spin.

My poor attempt at a little lateral work.
Note to self: shorten your damn reins!
Help the horse Aoife!!!

Nancy was a little looky when she came off the walker - well looky for her lolz. A horse was being led past her field of vision and then "disappeared" to graze and she was antsy to see where they'd gone ;-)
Yet when I got on it was like she was stuck in the sand to get her walking! Admittedly she had spent some time walking on the walker already so I wasn't overly worried and after my friend left we popped straight into trot and it was suddenly like she was on springs which made me smile as i had already ridden one horse I didn't want to get into a slog ☺

Sadly the light was awkward & N was
sluggish so this is the best "moving"
photo from yesterday. She got better - promise

I kept things short and sweet & literally only put her through her paces. Shifting gears between w/t/c & looping around the place changing reins. I also tried a bit of lateral work. She often works on it with PL, but I've always been wary of asking either girl for lateral work as I've never been taught how to do it myself & I know I sit all sorts of crooked so don't want to end up confusing everyone by not asking correctly. However I bit he bullet last night and tried to find the right buttons/cues on both girls. I won't pretend I did so correctly but there was enough of a shift at times that I could feel the back ends engaging and moving in the general direction of my haphazard cues.

She is built a bit like a tank
#thatchesttho