Ridiculous amounts of unneccessary words.

So with all the hectic events around me at the moment, I've not taken the time to come and write about Sunday's ride on Evo!
My friend Irina came out to meet my horses, and have a wee ride on Evo. She'd been excited ever since I'd told her she could come and ride if she wanted to, and was almost buzzing as we got to the paddock :) Evo instantly clicked with her which was nice... and Irina really liked him too, along with the others, even though Honey went 'ahhh Stranger Danger' when Irina went to rug her and came to me, haha.

I rode him first and gosh he felt lovely... the ground's firming up now, which is so awesome... and I'm not sure if he was showing off or my riding was good that day, because he was showing her what a dressage horse does, lol. I asked him to walk and got an active stride and then he accepted the bit, and I was so pleased to have him walking nicely underneath himself on the bit that I almost didn't want to get off. We had a couple of trots, which went well, but I could see that Irina was dying to ride, so I hopped off and let her have a go.

She actually has a really nice seat :) And was the first person I've met who wasn't fazed by his trot... in fact she got determined to get used to it and kept him going... all of this off the lunge too, I was sooo pleased not to have to play safety net on the ground for once! She was up on him for awhile, poor bugger thought that workies didn't last that long anymore, haha!

Although while she rode him, I realised something. I let a lot of people ride him, and although all his schooling is done by me, and he gets it relatively well when I'm teaching him, I don't actually stay on long enough when people are with me because I feel like they're dying to hop up... or I don't wanna ride in front of them for too long cos they get bored or something. I let my feelings for others watching, inhibit my training. On this particular day, I didn't care - I was freaking pleased with the way he worked for me. But if I didn't give in so early... if I didn't let everyone ride more than me - I'd be a hell of a lot more balanced and down the track. I know this must seem like the obvious to most... you're probably all sitting there going 'freaking tool, lacking common sense much?'... but I've never realised it in this light. Sure I usually don't wanna get off, but one look at the people waiting to ride, and I do. And some people call out to ask how my knee is, and it makes me think oh, I ought to get off... like a robot being instructed to do something.

It's this revelation to myself... this unrecognised feeling to please others, that I've realised I need to take a 'fuck it, do you own this horse? no?' attitude in a sense. I always think I'm a selfish person when I ride when I have visitors, my Mum always taught me to share I guess. But what sort of message am I sending to Evo? That its okay to have a quick schooling session now and when they get longer, he'll get confused? That Mummy can't ride for long? Sometimes that IS the case. He's a long horse and takes a lot of energy to get active enough for my liking. But it's not really the reason... I just don't want to seem rude.

It's no secret that your horse generally tries the most for you... and he's a textbook example of that. I weigh heaps, I won't lie... although I'm working SO HARD to lose that. And it doesn't help that I have had issues this winter over feeding. I've gone from good quality to shit grass, AND had my hay eaten by others if I left it in the shed. I'm lucky now that I have my side all fully locked and blocked off, so others' horses won't be able to climb in and get to it. So with only hard feed daily, he's lost a bit of weight. I feel awful about it, and I'm sure some people think I don't care enough. I know he's light, and so the impact of MY weight, on his back is a lot worse than say someone as light as Sophie, who's not even 40kgs. What I'm getting at, is that I know how much extra I make him have to balance and work, because I weigh so much. But you don't see him whinging about it. Sure, he does trot more nicely for Sophie, cos the ground is slippery as hell and he's an unco, massive animal... I get that. But he tries so hard for me, in the state that he is in... I mean he could be a lot worse, I know I over exaggerate a bit but I've had comments about his weight. So if I were to spend more time riding him, his topline is gonna reappear and he'll look so much better. I know this is all common sense, but I'm saying it like this cos not everyone reading this is completely intune with horse care/talk.

Thinking about all this now makes me keen to write down my goals. So I'm gonna end this ridiculously long blog now... with quick mentioning that Bailey is MUCH better from her ordeal in the weekend, although I'm still being quite sceptical about feeding her.
Chelle x