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Saturday, February 09, 2013

Twelveth Lesson & A Happy Trainer?

Today was fun :D Not a great ride, but I had fun. Mazlan and I was in a good mood hehe. All my mistakes were turned into grins and giggles!

Ruby wasn’t as obedient as she was last week. We went into the main arena first and she kept moving away from the track to join the other horses o.O Why do they all do that? Every horse I’ve ridden in the main arena pulls away towards the other horses. Is it that ‘herd’ mentality? I dunno, but it makes for difficult controlling if the horse refused to stay on OUR track. We decided to shift to one of the lunging paddocks instead. Did a few rising trots, then Mazlan wanted to see my sitting trots. He was really happy and satisfied with my progress, apparently :o He kept saying ‘Yes, yes!’ when I could sit the trot without freezing. That was certainly awesome! I found out that sitting trot needs a slow and very gentle trot or I’d be bouncing anyway.

We shifted to the oval ring again. This ring seems to be a favourite among all the trainers lol. I guess it’s cause it isn’t as boring as a lunging paddock. Here, I practiced sitting trot some more. Dad didn’t record any of my earlier sitting trots though. Then another trainer walked by and told Mazlan, “Last week, she could canter!”, to which Mazlan was surprised then told me to try it out XD I guess that trainer saw me last week, hehe. Yikes, all of them know me already! >.<

So I did the canter. It wasn’t as awesome as last week though. It was easy, getting Ruby to canter, last week. I think all the trainers have a different style of asking for the canter. Mazlan’s way is to push the reins forward when asking for the canter. Last week’s trainer told me to do rising trot, come to the corner, sit twice and kick hard. I didn’t get as much response from Ruby today. Took a bit to canter and then she’d slow down and stop everytime we reached where Mazlan was standing, as you’ll see in the video.

Mazlan also told me to try searching for my stirrups without looking XD That was funny. The stirrup was twisted, so I just couldn’t find it lol. It’ll take me some time to make searching without looking a habit lol. There was a couple of times where I concentrated so hard on searching for my stirrups that I didn’t pay attention to the canter >.< But Mazlan was definitely pleased. Cause I lost my stirrups while cantering and couldn’t find them again. Ended up cantering without the stirrups haha.

Two other riders came into the ring (again, lol), so Mazlan shifted us back to the lunging paddock. This is where I had real difficulty asking for the canter. I also kinda lost my balance completely o.o It was probably the extremely fast trot though. Looks like I still have work to do :D

Bad news, upon leaving the paddock when my hour was up, Mazlan didn’t push the gate far enough and it swung back... Guess where it hit? :( My left knee. HUGE metal thing swinging back with force? OUCH! The bruise isn’t just black now. It’s a swollen red lump with a black line below it... *whimper* That blow was really painful. It numbed up and faded off in time for me to give Ruby another shower though.

And this time, I showered her myself, ALONE XD It was amazing. I brushed her down soooooo well. Took my time in reaching every part of her :D And after that, one of the trainers told me to rub oil into her mane when I asked for a comb :o And then, the trainer told me to apply some green paste thing on Ruby’s wound. It was slimey and yuck! The paste turned out to be like paint, it didn’t wanna wash off my hand! Dad suggested I scrubbed my hand with the brush used for Ruby lol. It worked, but yuck! XD I think I prefer that spray my trainer used last week! I covered the wound real well though. I don’t think the flies like that paste, which is a good thing. Less flies near a wound, faster it heals.

After that, it was carrots time and then I led Ruby back to her stall. ^_^ I think she was happy to receive all that attention lol. Though, she was definitely a bit more hyper today than she was last week.

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