"Incidents"

Nothing of massive note happened yesterday.  The ring got dragged and I was too lazy to haul poles around so we had a boring straight forward ride.  What was funny is that when I pulled up two horses were being lunged. The first horse is a girl at the barn's "move up" warmblood who is sweet as can be, but currently ignores her very tiny rider about 1/3 of the time.  Not in a bad way, just in a slow, deliberate, I-steer-like-a-cow way.  It's cute, mostly.

The other horse is a lanky TB owned by another young student who is currently forbidden from riding him.  Apparently he's "dangerous." Mind you, a month ago I saw her going around 3'6" jumps no problem, but apparently he's learned how to rear, and while he won't pull any crap with any of the trainers, he's learned to take advantage of his cute owner and is a total nitwit.  He is now for sale.

ANYWAY, the move-up-warmblood belongs to the girl who's mom said that Pia was a "liability" in the ring and referred to my unfortuante "dismount" a few weeks ago as an "incident."

So, while I was tacking up I was chatting with said mom (she's a nice lady), and she was mentioning the incidents leading up to Nitwit TB being put up for sale.  I was distracted, mostly because I've never heard the word incident used so many times (it was sort of like counting how often a girl says like).  Buuuut, I tacked up, took P to the ring and got ready to lunge.  Meanwhile steer-like-a-cow is trotting round and round, turning sometimes when asked, but often encroaching our lunge circle (mind you, this ring is HUGE, space is not an issue...).

I get on, start doing our long low loose walk, when steer-like-a-cow gets put away and the girls old pony gets brought out. Ahem, the girls bratty pony gets brought out.  The pony is cute, but she's a pony, and she's bratty, and she also hadn't been ridden in about 4 days, so she's extra bratty. 

I was eyeing her just a little bit, since I wasn't sure how bratty the pony was going to be, and I really just wanted to not be worrying about any other horses and just focus on P, but it took about 5 minutes to realize that was not going to happen.  Bratty pony walked nicely for the first 4.5 minutes before promptly beginning a series of bucks, hops, spooks and small rears. 

I'll give her little rider some credit, she stuck on, and aside from being a little timid about sending the pony FORWARD to get out of it, she did well.  But her outburst meant that I stopped riding, and coached cute girl and bratty pony for 20 minutes while P chewed on her bit and waited somewhat impatiently to do something.

Moral of the story, I was kinda smirking about the fact that the mom got to watch P sit quietly and amble around the ring while her daughter fought the pony in fits and spurts attempting to get a consistent forward trot and canter out of her..

Point, Carie. 

It seems like the emphasis on my "incident" is going away, since every other horse in the barn is behaving like a lunatic. So that's nice.  It's also a little validating. 

Anyway. Pia was pretty good. nice loose walk, that weird trot/canter trot again (better by the end) and some minimal canter work.  We also worked on baby leg yields down the long side - getting her off my leg a little.  She's starting to get it. Tried to do it on a loose rein so as just to have her listen to my leg and not get her panties in a bunch...

Today we have a lesson (S is apparently up and about a little bit), so we'll see what's in store... fun times.