I watched the governor's statement and read it afterwards. The order says that outdoor activities are ok, as long as social distance can be kept. It also says that going out to care for family members AND pets is ok. It's vague and leaves room for interpretation. Maybe too much so. BUT, since it doesn't officially take effect until this evening, we agreed that I would come out, ride, clean Tosh's stall, and make sure he had clean water and plenty of hay. She later told me she was joking about the last part, but I told her I don't mind doing it, even if it's a formality under the vagueness of our stay at home order.
Anyway, while I believe that horse activities are naturally compliant with social distancing, if you're being safe about it, I still made a conscious effort to change my routine. Normally I go about 90 minutes early, get my horse all brushed, booted, and take him for a drink. I maybe put the surcingle (or saddle) on, and then go watch part of a lesson before I finish getting ready.
Yesterday, I got to the barn about an hour before my lesson -- enough time to lunge if Tosh needed it (it was 75 when I got there and he'd been out the night before, he didn't need to be lunged) and to get on 10-15 minutes before my class to start my warm-up early (something we had agreed on a week or so ago). I started in the bathroom, washed my hands. Then, I carried his brush bucket and bridle out to his stall. We always brush and tack in the stall anyway, so I brushed him, put his boots on, took him for water at the trough, and then put him back in his stall to hang out. His water buckets were full and reasonably clear, so I just scrubbed the edges and outsides and filtered the hay and shavings out of the water as much as I could. Then I went to the bathroom and washed my hands again, grabbed a lysol wipe, wiped down the bathroom door knob, light switch, and then carried the wipe with me to wipe down a pitchfork to put by his stall door for later, the handle on his brush bucket, and the scrub brush and colander handles I had used to clean his water buckets.
I chatted briefly with a couple of other people that were cooling out, all of us at least a horse distance apart, and basically hung out by Tosh's stall until about 11:35, when I went to grab a surcingle from the arena locker. I brought it back to his stall, tacked him up, and walked him to the gate around 11:45 when I asked if we could come in and get warmed up.
I noticed immediately that my hips felt great (last week they had been really tight), but as I came around the corner between C and M, T said, you're really crooked today. Sure enough, I was tipping from the waist. I halted in front of her and lifted both arms over my head, then lowered them to shoulder height turned my thumbs to the right and twisted my torso to bring my right arm out over his croup. My left arm followed the motion, staying in front of me. After a few deep breaths, I turned back to the front, lifted my arms over my head again, and then repeated the stretch to the left. That helped lift my torso a little bit. T asked what I wanted to work on. I said, loosening up! So, we started to the right and did some circles while focusing on keeping the right side of my body lifted.
Circling at the trot got more complicated. We realized my right leg is staying fairly loose (finally!), but now the for some reason I am bracing my left leg instead. This difficulty circling has been my new normal the last few weeks. It is steadily getting better. It's just not there yet. We chatted quite a bit about what I was feeling and did a little experiment at the halt. She had me lift my right arm over my head, close my eyes and then turn my body like I wanted to turn right. I felt a soft turn and lift in my body and Tosh bent around my right leg without me even trying. Then she had me do the same thing with my eyes open. I turned but collapsed. Tosh shifted his weight and counter-bent to rebalance as I unconsciously shifted my weight to the left. She had me try it with my eyes closed again -- and again, he rebalanced, straightening his body and then bent in a soft arc around my right leg. Interesting. We did the same thing to the left and the result was not as drastically obvious, but he did bend left around my left leg. I shifted my butt a little more to lift my right seat bone and tried again. Much more bend that time. I have got to figure out how to remove that pesky right seat bone from his spine!
That was really eye opening (no pun intended), though. While I am more aware of what my body is doing, I am still not quite feeling what we're working on. I'm still relying on my eye, which is clearly complicating things.
We decided to canter to the left first. She had me do a turn on the haunches to the left and ask as we came out of the turn. So, with a long rein, I held onto the grabs, took a deep breath, and rotated my body to the left. As he came out of the turn, I put my right leg back and said Canter! Off we went. We almost immediately did an arc from B to E. Oops. I tried to keep my torso up and back. T said, feel how he wants to dive in? Look to the outside longer. So, as we came around the corner from A to F and down the long side, I kept my eye to the outside of the rail. Tosh straightened up, stepped onto the rail and stayed there until I turned my head to look from M to H. He got rounder, softer, and effortlessly turned exactly where I told him to. I looked straight and out until we got to M, and then turned to look at K. Same thing. Soft, round, effortless turn, where I had been struggling before. AND, my body stayed up and back.
We halted in front of T and she said, that was AMAZING. How did it feel? I said, it felt incredible. We've been working on me not changing my eyes so early, but it felt like looking OUT really fixed a lot of the issues I've been having. Then we did another turn on the haunches to the right lead. At first, it felt so fast. I knew it wasn't really fast. So, I started counting my strides 1...2...3...4...1...2...3...4. As I relaxed into the rhythm, it felt slower. I knew the tempo wasn't changing but Tosh's stride was. It felt more collected, rounder, a longer moment of suspension. Incredible. I focused again on eyes up and looking OUT, not turning my eyes until I was actually AT the letter I wanted to turn from. Holy crap. Changing my eyes didn't fix everything, but it did fix a lot. I still have an issue with the corner from C to M -- I always want to tip there for whatever reason. But I was able to ask Tosh to turn in both directions without trying nearly as hard, and was consistently getting a better, prompter, softer response from him.
When we halted, I commented that it felt so easy, so SUBTLE. That I didn't have to turn my body nearly as much as I thought I did, to get the response I wanted. My focus was on my eyes, NOT my body, yet I had absolutely no issue turning. The thought-provoking question T posed to me at the end was, Have I been shouting at him all this time? Has he been tuning me out (to a point) because I'm asking him so loudly to turn while also blocking his ability to turn by locking/bracing 1 side of my body?
Love a good epihany
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