Freestyle video of River and I.
Jun. 12th, 2025 12:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gottawonderToday we recorded a video of River and I, doing our freestyle program that I used for YELO's online competition.
I worked on this all winter, getting River used to the umbrella, riding him with it open first walking, then trotting.
It took a long time and a lot of nerve for me to stand up on him, to get him to tolerate the umbrella being held against his body while I stood up (because there's no way I could get myself standing with only one hand, so I had to use both hands, and still hold the umbrella in one hand, and the umbrella bumps him, and this is a horse trained to move away from something bumping him).
Though I knew what music I had wanted from the beginning, as that's where the whole theme came from, I had to edit it to fit the two songs together, and to work with it so that the "crescendo" fairly equally divided the mounted part and the part where I'm on the ground with him.
I had to find a raincoat, and had to make sure it would sit on me correctly while mounted, without having a lot of jangly hardware on it.
I had to find an umbrella (thrift store) that would hold up to me using it all winter for practice and tossing it on the ground and maybe getting stepped on a bit over and over again.
I finally had to firm up things, bringing various elements together into something that made sense and worked with the music.
I had to figure out how to make the "lamp posts" using garden lights, a section of PVC pipe and taping that together, and a ten pound weight at the bottom that you can't see for the sand, to keep it from falling over.
The part at the end where I'm on the ground and he's trotting around me is considered an advanced type of Liberty, because I am not doing anything at all, standing perfectly still, and River is trotting around me. Leading up to this, most of the time a handler has to draw the horse into a circle by kind of walking backwards and "leading" them, or by kind of walking forward with them.
So that's the work and planning that goes into making a slightly less than five minute long freestyle video.
https://youtu.be/9sbOrW8uhqE?si=cmf41KQbjfUtggpD
I worked on this all winter, getting River used to the umbrella, riding him with it open first walking, then trotting.
It took a long time and a lot of nerve for me to stand up on him, to get him to tolerate the umbrella being held against his body while I stood up (because there's no way I could get myself standing with only one hand, so I had to use both hands, and still hold the umbrella in one hand, and the umbrella bumps him, and this is a horse trained to move away from something bumping him).
Though I knew what music I had wanted from the beginning, as that's where the whole theme came from, I had to edit it to fit the two songs together, and to work with it so that the "crescendo" fairly equally divided the mounted part and the part where I'm on the ground with him.
I had to find a raincoat, and had to make sure it would sit on me correctly while mounted, without having a lot of jangly hardware on it.
I had to find an umbrella (thrift store) that would hold up to me using it all winter for practice and tossing it on the ground and maybe getting stepped on a bit over and over again.
I finally had to firm up things, bringing various elements together into something that made sense and worked with the music.
I had to figure out how to make the "lamp posts" using garden lights, a section of PVC pipe and taping that together, and a ten pound weight at the bottom that you can't see for the sand, to keep it from falling over.
The part at the end where I'm on the ground and he's trotting around me is considered an advanced type of Liberty, because I am not doing anything at all, standing perfectly still, and River is trotting around me. Leading up to this, most of the time a handler has to draw the horse into a circle by kind of walking backwards and "leading" them, or by kind of walking forward with them.
So that's the work and planning that goes into making a slightly less than five minute long freestyle video.
https://youtu.be/9sbOrW8uhqE?si=cmf41KQbjfUtggpD
