Thoughts and Ramblings

Let's start off with sometihng totally un-horsey.  Last night I had the pleasure of going to see the Foo Fighters at the ACC!  Despite the awful drive, horrendus traffic, the fact I had to be ready to go at 3:30 for a 7:00 concert and we still missed all but one song of the first band (long drive and traffic) and my concert going companions were my little brother, his friend, and my mother (not really the people I'd choose to go to a rock concert with) I REALLY enjoyed myself.  Then again, it's the Foos; how could I not?  Plus, I scored a free ticket.  I suppose I'm lucky my baby bro's got good friends! 
I really did go with an odd group of people though.  My brother sat through the entire concert, and insisted upon leaving after the second encore song (despite the fact the encore was acoustic... I wish I could have gone to one of their concerts on the acoustic tour. They do an amazing  acoustic set), his friend had heard all of two Foo fighters songs before last night, and I distinctly remember my mum saying "This is awful" or "That music's terrible!" whenever the Foos would come on the radio. Everyone claimed to have enjoyed the concert though....  Oh, and I learned that it's awkward going to a rock concert with your parents.  Somehow I always escaped that when I was younger.  I've gone with friends and their parents, but never with my own.  Until now, that is.
Anyhow, I should stop ranting.  The concert was amazing, they played for over 2 hours, and now I'm done.

Pony time!  Monday Cadence and I did some w/t stretch work and then picked up and worked on staying on the contact into and out of our trot-halt transitions.  She was fantastic.  A bitch throughout everything else though; she's in heat again.  Yesterday we had a jumping lesson and focused on keeping a nice easy canter into two little x raisl set on a circle.  Easy in theory, harder when your pony tries to launch herself over them since she considers them a good excuse to go faster.  We had three cheap run-outs early on which were sort of my fault, but improved throughout the lesson.  Today we're probably going to do some light dressage work and jump Friday instead of Dressage test stuffs... maybe, dunno. 

Musings on position:  Watching the videos of last Thursday and reading Sarah's comment on my last post has gotten me thinking about my position.  My jumping position was always my weak point, but since I started riding Cadence I've developed a couple of bad habits.  With the help of my coach I've also broken some, and improved my position a fair bit, but lets start with the bad.  The biggest bad habit I've developed is rounding my back.  When I first got Cadence she was really green o/f, and had a huge jump. To stay out of her way and still sit her jump, I ended up doing this weird rounded back thingy.  I've (for the most part) gotten out of that habit, but I still do it when I don't put conscious thought into jumping properly.  I have however (again for the most part) broken the habit of jumping up the horse's neck.  I was terrible about that when Arty and I were showing hunters.  I've gotten better about that though.  Additionally, I've gotten a lot better about staying with the motion of the horse, specifically over larger fences.  That's something I think I could work on a bit still though.  Lastly, when I first started riding with my coach she determined that my jumping was solid enough and I had enough feel in my hands that I shouldn't be doing a big crest release, and should use the "advanced release". (Sarah's comment)  This more than anything helped improve Arty and my jumping.  I was able to keep a light feel on him and have my hands in a much more effective position.  When riding that little rocket, this REALLY helped. 

Old Pony Pics