4mastjack was kind enough to come out to the barn on Wednesday to take some shots of the dressage class. The ring tends to be a bit dim, and out of concern for possible unplanned spaz attacks I'd asked him not to use flash, so not many of the shots came out. A few did, though, and I will post them so that everyone can peer at Cappi and decide whether he lives up to my hype of him. I'm not posting them yet, because I'm a lazy layabout and it has been A Week.
Dressage did go quite well, though, and one of the joys of the summer session is that most classes have been suspended, making it easier to get the horses we want and to run over on time without anyone tapping hooves impatiently at the gate. Cappi, mane neatly trimmed by the first week's teen campers, was his usual excellent self. We tried a new exercise, walking and then trotting an equilateral triangle, the tricks being to keep a straight line on each side and to make the 60-degree turns as crisply as possible. Cappi seems to love precision pivot work; after the first round, he took to enthusiastically bunching himself up and spinning almost entirely on his haunches at each corner, then trotting a perfect line to the next point. Sterling, who shared our space, was having more trouble mastering the concept, and if it were possible for horses to look smug, Cappi did. "Neener neener, a Morgan can do what an Arabian cannot." Who can blame him? In looking through the photos, I saw that we really for sure don't match in terms of body size—my legs trail down his sides practically far enough to touch his knees—but Pat agrees that we make a good match in an "Odd Couple" sort of way.
The week ended on a positive note, too. Our office has recently implemented a summer swingtime policy, so every other week half of us get to go home at noon on Fridays, work permitting. That last clause is the bugger, and I still have not entirely managed to take full advantage of the extra time, so ideal for slackin' and nappin' and general back-kickin'. But yesterday Ginsey and I were able to get out by about 2:30, and after long sober thought about how to best spend the precious gift of time, we headed for Lauriol Plaza and the huge vortex of their margarita machines. If there is a better way to spend a summer afternoon than sitting in the shade and sipping on high-octane boozy drinks, I want it hunted down and shot.
[ETA: "Mongol"! Starring some guys with hot cheekbones, a bazillion and two horses, and the entire mobile population of Kazakhstan. Y'all, just...DAMN.]
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2 comments:
That triangle exercise sounds good - we'll try it. "Mongol": if it ever comes to my town, I'll be there in the front row.
Let me know how it goes; it'd be interesting to hear how a more advanced dressage horse handles the exercise. For the record, the triangles were the width of our ring, or about 15 meters tall (maybe--I'm crap at estimating distances), but as long as you've got at least three or four long strides between the corners I'm sure you could adapt it to almost any ring space. One trainer recommends doing this sort of exercise on trail, too, using trees or rocks as points, just to keep the horses sharp.
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