Day 3: Best ride ever? + Updates and Decisions

How about no.

Am I the only one who can say I haven't had a 'best ride ever'? Sure I've had some pretty awesome rides...

One kinda recent really good lesson was on this guy (a few months ago):

Excuse my face... Focus on the pony! (ok, he's not a pony...)

That my friends is Ged I mentioned him in this post. He's the awesome ex- eventer :) 

Some of my all time best lesson and rides have been on Midge. Cliché I know, the best rides are on your favourite horse... yadadada. But truly he's taught me so fricking much! When I first started riding him he would bolt for no apparent reason, drop his shoulder, evade the bit and llama his way around just to name a few, now we have some sort of decent riding when I ride him, just riding on trails is obviously a little detrimental to this, as my concentration isn't fully on him, I'm focusing on keeping the customers safe and such. However even if we've had an 'interesting' ride (read: spooky, bolty, very 'looky', not focused at ALL) the connection I seem to find with him is really awesome, I just kinda 'get' him and even though the rides are less than stellar I still feel as if I've accomplished something :)

Now that we've established that I don't like today's post challengy thingy,  we shall move on to  catching up on the photo challenge, because I suck at life and can't remember shit.

A picture of you riding:

I actually can't find anything on my laptop of me riding, so you all will have to wait and I'll do a post in a few days catching up on the photo challenge! And I have to find the damn photos (they're all over the place, on the family computer, on phones, etc)

I laughed so hard at this :D 

Source: http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4p7k1g93a1rrpdnko1_1280.png

In other news I had an interesting lesson on saturday. I started off the lesson back on Casino, flat work, working on 3 loop serpentines and stuff like that and then 'R' (My instructor) set up a few small jumps so we could continue to prep for the schooling show thing at my barn. Long story short we went over the trot poles and one small cross rail, me riding him has forward as fricking possible but he still trotted over. After a quick discussion "R" and I determined that he didn't like to 'jump' because he was unbalanced, to put it in perspective when I started riding him a few months ago he could barely canter! So considering he's doing a HEAP better, we're still working on his right canter lead and getting him to lower his head and work his body a little better instead of llamaing around the place :D So "R" got me on Stanley when we started jumping, he's this huge chunky chestnut gelding, who is a complete powerhouse, or should I say, powerhorse! So basically I went from Casino's awkward, bouncy, unbalanced stride to Stanley's huge, smooth and even stride, fun time :)

But boy does that horse jump! 

I'm still debating wether to ride Casino in the schooling day, 'cause I feel like it would be a really nice challenge to get him from where he is, seeing as we've already come so far! However "R" wants me to ride Stanley because she thinks it'd be a nice learning opportunity to ride a horse that doesn't balk at everything (Midge), doesn't be an idiot (most problem horses I ride while volleying, and Midge) and doesn't llama his way around the arena unevenly like Casino! Stanley is a fairly trained horse, relative the the rest of the lesson ponies, and is a nice ride, he is super, super, super strong though so I would have to work on my stopping skills!

Decisions...

Source: http://www.quickmeme.com/