'Nother Debbie Clinic...

This clinic was supposed to happen 3 weeks ago... cancelled due to snow... cancelled cuz only 3 people could ride in it... cancelled cuz Debbie got the crud.

Today it finally happened!

My ride was at 9:45. I left the house at 8am leaving me plenty o' time to get to the Johnson's Corner exit and a couple miles down the road to Bey Breze Farm. I arrived at 8:45. Ahhhh - plenty of time...

I unloaded Sera from the trailer, took her on a walk about in the mud and muck. We were supposed to get 3" of snow but only got enough moisture to make things muddy. In fact I had to put the truck in 4X4 to get it through the farm parking lot. uck.

I tied Sera to the trailer with a hay bag full o' hay. I groomed and tacked her up while she contentedly munched said hay. I did NOT want to go thru the mud in my freshly cleaned tall black riding boots, so I grabbed them and marched through the slop into the barn.

I'm glad Sera stands well enough for me to hold her while I take muddy Blundstones off to put on shiny dress boots...

I put my ear piece in (fancy mic and earpiece gig!) and mounted up. She was pretty stiff today... shrug. She can be that way... My lesson started and we worked on getting her round and through, Sera gives it up pretty quickly. Counter flexion, half halts and inside leg to outside rein get her where she needs to be.

We moved into haunches in, shoulder in, renvers... she went from shoulder in to renvers easily but when asked to go from renvers to shoulder in? Not so pretty. We worked on that a bit...

Moved on to collected canter. Sera's rhythm was MUCH improved from the last clinic when she'd get sorta funky in her collected canter. It wasn't that she was having a tantrum, which she can have, I think it was more about being hard for her to find her balance and rhythm in collected canter last clinic.

We worked on medium canter from collected canter - the up transition was good - the medium canter was good... the medium back down to collected? Not so good.

I was supposed to tickle her with my whip coming to collected to keep her from falling out.. keep her collected, using her hind legs and moving onward vs. losing her frame and looking sloppy or dropping down to trot.

Sera didn't think much of the whip idea... esp. coming down from the excitement of the medium canter! She gets awful pissy about the whip. She's got to get over it... I ignored her flattened ears and both hind feet kicking out. I touched her with the whip various times throughout the ride and she accepted this.

We worked on our turn on the haunches - she needs to move quicker off of my leg. Again I had to use my stick, tho' she accepted it well. No kicking...

It was a really fun ride. Sera Sue works HARD for me. I love her to death, we've been through so much to get to this stage where we are truly a TEAM.

I took her to the trailer, untacked her, put her wool cooler over her ears to tail sweaty self and walked her about. We found a lovely patch of fresh spring grass in a sunny spot for her to munch while she dried out.

Good, good mare.