#loungeing

Kaitlyn and Taylor: Today was strictly a riding day; Chris taught us that preparing all that is needed, before bringing in the horse, is essential when tacking. That includes water buckets; one for our horse to drink, the other for cleaning the grooming tools; saddle with pad or blanket, helmets, grooming tools, and bitless bridle. Today we chose to ride Chief, so we had to catch him and bring him to the tacking area, which wasn’t hard because he already knew what was in store and was patiently waiting for us. We simultaneously groomed Chief one of us on each side, and Chris cleaned his hooves and sprayed his hooves with an antifungal/antiseptic solution. Then Chris tacked Chief with blanket and saddle. We went into the arena and matched feet with Chief around the arena and then we lounged with him. At first we had a hard time getting him to trot because our energy wasn’t at trotting level, but once he got going, I flicked the lounge stick up and down behind me like a tail (big flicks), and our energy got up to canter level and we experienced loungeing at a canter gait, which was fun for all of us. We couldn’t keep up with Chief when he left the circle and cantered straight so we let him go because there would be no way we could keep up. Chief stopped at the end of the arena, turned around and walked back towards us, which was awesome! And we said “nice” because he came back and we gave him a little reward. We got to the mounting block and Taylor was the first to mount, I was excited for her because she had a very traumatic incident a few years ago when she fell off twice during her riding lesson once when the horse was jumping and a few minutes later when the horse was cantering. She ended up with covered in bruises and a very sore back. She mounted Chief smoothly which made me overjoyed! After adjusting the stirrups Chris reminded us how important it was to keep our bodies balanced over the horse’s center of gravity; to keep our upper body upright and off our hips; and to keep our lower back, buttocks, and legs relaxed so that they can move with the horse. Horses have difficulty moving when the rider’s legs are tense and gripping. She lead Chief all over the arena while Taylor had her arms up so that she could focus on feeling his back legs with her seat bones, after that Chris gave her the reins, so that she could feel his front feet through the reins, which is hard because the movements are soft and not as noticeable and so you have to keep a little tension on the reins without pulling. After about 25-30 minutes she dismounted. Chief was not tired at all so it was my turn. I mounted Chief with some hesitation but finally I got on, and repeated what Taylor did. Chris talked to us about how important it is to use our legs and hands to imagine and create “lanes”, like traffic lanes, for our horses to travel in. We both practiced going straight and changing lanes by asking Chief to move to the left and right of a straight line by putting more weight on the appropriate seat bone. We did this by pushing a little and “opening the door” of the stirrup on the side of to the lane we wanted to move into. The best thing was that Chief quite naturally moved in the direction we wanted to go without our needing to do anything with the reins. All in all, we both did very well today, and we’re looking forward to Sunday.

In this picture me and Taylor are loungeing Chief at a canter gait. This is our first time.

  This is Taylor feeling Chief's back legs through her seat bones.