After the ride with Lendon Gray, finals and life consumed me and Gali got an impromptu week off. I was only able to get out to groom him and let him stretch a bit with some lunging and legging up around the farm. When I did finally get the time to ride, on my way home from my last exam, he was perfect and up for some shenanigans. I've ridden him twice since and haven't blogged, so here it goes.
12/23 - I met Bekka out at the farm on a fairly cold day, and after trying to come up with any excuse to not ride our horses, I tacked Gali up and she rode Katie in from the field and threw just a bridle on her. Gali warmed up with me just as I'd like him to after a week mostly off - long, low and supple. I trotted him around the ring on the buckle, worked some figure eights in uberstreichen, worked some canter in half seat, and only really put him to work for about twenty minutes on the bit. He seemed to remember what we learned with Lendon, and was surprisingly willing to work forward and into contact. By the time I thought he'd had enough work, a little girl was following Bekka around, begging to ride Katie without a saddle. I offered Gali to Bekka and said I'd walk the girl around, and Bekka untacked Gali and hopped on for some quality bonding time. They had fun and Bekka showed the little girl how it was possible to post to the walk and trot bareback, ride side-saddle, and take a 'nap' on the horse by kicking your legs up onto their haunches, and Gali showed the girl that it isn't that hard to stay on a bolting Percheron, even if you're wearing Uggs and have no idea where your reins are.
12/25 - Gali got some fun things for Christmas, including a day off. Jason and I brought him a mash and treats.
12/26 - We worked on our circle shapes - going to the left we're pretty accurate, but to the right, he falls in and I overcorrect, and things get kind of shitty. His rhythm was pretty much spot on, which is rare for him, so I really took the time to ask him to lift up his feet and stretch down into contact, and he finally did not rush. To the right, his canter was off. I'm not sure if it was a stiff/lame sort of off, or because he tripped early in our warmup and was just being dumb about that lead because of the stumble, but I did not want to work too much canter and instead ended by practicing some sort of Intro test thing. Our shapes were a lot better than usual, but still had some falling in problems and our halt was atrocious.
12/27 - One of my best friends, Alexis, was finally home from school and came out to ride. She is one of the few people that I completely trust on Gali, but she hasn't ridden him in a few months. We grew up riding together - her as a terribly misguided hunter, and me as an uptight dressage queen. Now I've relaxed a lot, and she completely re-started her riding career at the age of 20 when she transferred to Centenary. Her horse is very much a jumper, and she has trouble practicing dressage principles with him because they are both rather dressage-green, so she had been pining to ride Gali for a while. It began to rain when I pulled him from the field, so we tacked up quickly, checked the footing, and I hopped on to warm him up. When I cantered my big dumb pony past her, with one hand on the reins and one hand waving to her hiding in the run in shed, I think she realized how much he has changed since moving to BTF. She got on and I saw him start messing with her by running away with her at the trot, and over the steady rainfall I gave her directions to get him focusing on her. She wasn't riding as aggressively as she usually does, and Gali was pretending to spook at both ends of the ring, so just going around on the rail wasn't helping them at all. When I asked her to do a serpentine, Gali and I both nearly fell over because she completed all three loops in the space of about 1.5 circles. I explained the exercise a little better, and the next time through she did three nice, large, would-be-20meter-circles-loops, and after a strong half-halt in the last corner, I had her let him extend. He stretched exactly the way I would have asked him to, and it made me proud to see her really working through the concepts I was teaching her and making them work. They did a handful of serpentines in each direction at the trot, then cantered long and low around the whole ring. I took her stirrups away and she had some "OH MY GOD HE IS SO MUCH MORE COMFY THAN MY THOROUGHBRED" moments at the trot and canter, and then all three of us said "fuck the rain!" and cooled Gali out in the empty barn.
I'm glad he was so good and so responsive when she put him to work - he can be a great horse to learn on, but he can also be a total douche if he thinks he can get away with it when someone is trying to learn from him. I'm also extremely happy to say that after riding in the moderately-chilly rain for 45 minutes and working pretty hard, he cooled out and dried off very quickly and evenly, and it actually surprised me - it really showed me how fit and healthy he is back to being.
I really wanted to do some trot sets today with another friend, but with the torrential rain last night and the Wizard-of-Oz winds we got today, I opted to stay in bed and do nothing productive at all. I think I'll save the trot sets for Friday.
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