Audacity

Last weekend most likely marked my last chance to get over to HorseLady's farm to do some riding prior to our move to upstate New York. Since I only have one set of photos of me riding, along with a brief video, I asked Trueman to bring along the camera when he came to pick me up, to get a couple of photos.

Little did I know that he would get sucked into watching a Duran Duran concert on TV and wouldn't show up until the sun was starting to go down, resulting in some blurry action shots and not-so-flattering photos of me riding with very bad posture, partially to blame on the fact that I'd been riding for four hours and then some. Eh.

It was fun, though.

I got to the farm just after two and found HorseLady with some of her new riding students. She had recently put an ad in the local base newspaper to find people to come out and learn to ride, in return for doing some barn work. The ad had found response primarily with mothers with younger children, and when I arrived, one mother and her children were leaving, and another mother and her three children (aged four through twelve) had arrived and were learning to groom and tack ponies.

Conveniently for me, Audacity was already tacked up, having been ridden by the mother in the group before me, so I kindly offered to clear the space where she was cross-tied and take her outside, as they needed the room to cross-tie Hatter to tack him up for the littlest girl.

HorseLady warned me that the person who'd ridden Audacity before me had "let her get away" with a lot of bad behavior, such as stopping by or running back to the barn gate, and that I might expect some fussing.

Audacity was on her worst behavior. She kicked out when I asked her to canter, tried repeatedly to get back to the barn, and just all around was acting like a pain in the butt. As a result, we spent a fair amount of time trotting around the ring and practicing transitions trot to canter and back as well as a nice, slow, collected canter.

About an hour into this, Brittney came to the farm and HorseLady sent her out on Easter so we could ride together. That was a lot of fun. We did some walk-trot-canter and some minor jumping. Then the older girl of the family came outside on Melissa and Brittney and I were tasked to watch over her and give her some tips, since it was only her second time on a horse. She did really well. And Audacity stopped being so fussy.

Brittney and I put a line of parking cones into the riding ring so we could do slalom runs, which was a lot of fun for everyone, including the horses!

A little while after that, HorseLady and the rest of the family came out and we rode as a group - first along the fence, so the little ones would not have any trouble with their ponies going back to the barn, and then in the larger grassy area. Brittney and I helped keep an eye on everyone.

After another hour or so of that, which was mostly walking around the ring, HorseLady and the younger kids went inside, and Brittney, myself, the older daughter, and the mom stayed outside. The mom had trouble getting Guia to cooperate with her, so I asked her whether she wanted to trade with me for a little while since she said she'd ridden Audacity previously. She didn't have much more luck getting Audacity to trot than Guia, but I think she likes her better anyway.

A while after that, we all went inside, untacked the ponies and put them away. Brittney, myself, and the older daughter oiled some of the saddles while HorseLady went to ground-drive Hatter, who is doing really well with that. Then the family left and Trueman finally showed up, so I tacked Audacity back up and went back outside for a few photos.

Morale of the story ... if you've been riding for four hours, you don't take good pictures.

And you're gonna be sore the next day. VERY sore.