Friday, October 11
Oct. 12th, 2024 01:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gottawonderToday I am grateful for:
Feeling better today, likely because I've been finally getting some real sleep, and Roxy seems to be doing okay. It's very hard to enjoy anything if an animal isn't doing well.
Also, because I made enough real progress on my freestyle that I feel like I know what we're doing, more or less. Before our lesson Wednesday, I was struggling with how to put it together.
I also struggle with "how is this freestyle interesting and original enough, with some technical stuff". The people who do this kind of thing have been making some REALLY interesting freestyles, and of course as we all improve, the bar is a little higher every time. People put a lot of work into costumes and developing a theme of some kind, and some challenging elements.
Sure, it's supposed to be fun, but think of it like doing a dance routine, the last thing anyone wants is for their performance to be boring or have low technical merit. If I'm going to even do a freestyle, I want it to be something fun to watch where at least once people go "ooh, that was well done!.
So, as fun as this can be, there's also a certain amount of stress trying to come up with stuff, and making a costume, and figuring out how to make it all work to music, etc.
Having more of it work out helps me relax, and to focus on just polishing it a bit.
Roxy and I walked around the now-mowed horse pasture for a while, and I am very glad to see the improvement in her general demeanor. She just seems peppier, and I'm glad for that.
Then I went to the barn. R is taking some time off this week, so the girl with health challenges didn't have a lesson today.
I did work with River on stuff for our freestyle, and I brought the big snake today. Last night I made a head for it, so I made sure he had time to get used to that.
We practiced some of the elements that are now firmed up, and then I played around with the ridden part, which isn't as firm. We're working on dragging the snake while mounted, which is a way of showing that he's calm enough to do that. It demonstrates the work we've put into getting him used to something like that. It's a big, 12 foot long section of weeping tile made into a snake, and it makes noise and moves weird, and it's a big deal to have a horse accept dragging something like that around.
We dragged it at a walk, and then a trot, and then I played around with me holding one end of it and having him walk over part of it while still mounted. It's very cool, and I'm so impressed that he's willing to do that.
I wanted to show SOMEONE this last part, because IT IS COOL, but today there was no one around, and my husband wasn't able to come early enough. Sigh.
Well, River and I are awesome, whether anyone saw it today or not.
I came home and we watched "John Carter", a movie that supposedly sucked pretty badly, but I thought it was a bit better than the reviews. Fun, anyhow.
Feeling better today, likely because I've been finally getting some real sleep, and Roxy seems to be doing okay. It's very hard to enjoy anything if an animal isn't doing well.
Also, because I made enough real progress on my freestyle that I feel like I know what we're doing, more or less. Before our lesson Wednesday, I was struggling with how to put it together.
I also struggle with "how is this freestyle interesting and original enough, with some technical stuff". The people who do this kind of thing have been making some REALLY interesting freestyles, and of course as we all improve, the bar is a little higher every time. People put a lot of work into costumes and developing a theme of some kind, and some challenging elements.
Sure, it's supposed to be fun, but think of it like doing a dance routine, the last thing anyone wants is for their performance to be boring or have low technical merit. If I'm going to even do a freestyle, I want it to be something fun to watch where at least once people go "ooh, that was well done!.
So, as fun as this can be, there's also a certain amount of stress trying to come up with stuff, and making a costume, and figuring out how to make it all work to music, etc.
Having more of it work out helps me relax, and to focus on just polishing it a bit.
Roxy and I walked around the now-mowed horse pasture for a while, and I am very glad to see the improvement in her general demeanor. She just seems peppier, and I'm glad for that.
Then I went to the barn. R is taking some time off this week, so the girl with health challenges didn't have a lesson today.
I did work with River on stuff for our freestyle, and I brought the big snake today. Last night I made a head for it, so I made sure he had time to get used to that.
We practiced some of the elements that are now firmed up, and then I played around with the ridden part, which isn't as firm. We're working on dragging the snake while mounted, which is a way of showing that he's calm enough to do that. It demonstrates the work we've put into getting him used to something like that. It's a big, 12 foot long section of weeping tile made into a snake, and it makes noise and moves weird, and it's a big deal to have a horse accept dragging something like that around.
We dragged it at a walk, and then a trot, and then I played around with me holding one end of it and having him walk over part of it while still mounted. It's very cool, and I'm so impressed that he's willing to do that.
I wanted to show SOMEONE this last part, because IT IS COOL, but today there was no one around, and my husband wasn't able to come early enough. Sigh.
Well, River and I are awesome, whether anyone saw it today or not.
I came home and we watched "John Carter", a movie that supposedly sucked pretty badly, but I thought it was a bit better than the reviews. Fun, anyhow.
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Date: 2024-10-13 03:55 am (UTC)