Weak Aids

I thought my 100th post would be about our adoption of a new dog, buttttt I ended up riding before I got to it...
 
I rode Sunday with some weak aids. My legs are nothing, I forgot to grab a crop, and I was too lazy to put on spurs. It was in the 40-50 range for the morning ride, and it had been in the 60's Sunday, but with rain. This coming weekend, we're back down to the 30's for the high. Blah. Anyways, the ride was good. There was one slight kicking out issue, but it wasn't too bad.

I rode on the track since everything was soggy, and we did a warm up with w/t before moving to canter. Trot was nothing special other than Spyder didn't want to move and my legs are shot. Riding once a week is not giving me the tools I need to push him forward. Without spurs or a crop, I was all kick, squeeze, cluck. None of that made him particularly angry so we worked on pushing forward and moving back down within the gait. I'm going to need to work on trot sets if I plan on doing a CTR, and I have until the end of March for the first event so let's hope the weather is decent. I'm happy the track is sand because it's never too bad in the weather patterns we get. I also got the date for the hunter pace which is in April! :)

Moving up to the canter, it was slow, smooth, and nice! It's more comfortable than the trot, and he moved around in a full circle in both directions with little, but some pushing. When he wanted to come back down to a trot, I pushed back to the canter which is where I got the bucky, kicky thing Spyder's got going on once in a while. We have [yet again] worked in a circle so I need to think about this straight tactic to bring that into shows this season, potentially... never. I don't see it happening so I have the CTR on my mind! We ended the ride cooling out after I tried the sitting trot to see how that would go. I am going to recap on the last videos where I decided it was a good idea to try it without stirrups (I think that was the first ride of the new year).

After I rode, I stayed and cleaned up Spyder since I let the mud from the paddock dry as I rode. I made sure he got some ginger snaps for being so good for me! He LOVES anything that comes in a plastic wrapper/container and goes crazy even when he hears a shopping bag. In this video, he's not half as bad as usual, but you can see his excitement. It's worked for my advantage to get him out of the field, but he acts like a mad man if he doesn't get his treats right away!

After he went back in the paddock, I stayed for another 2 hours with the wind (only because there was sun) to clean my tack and enjoy what I could of the decent weather.

Finally cleaned it up!