Pam's Pony Place: ellie

A Note About This Blog

I used to be a writer. Unpublished, but a writer just the same. I have several 100,000 word novels sitting on my hard drive. Then I fell off a horse and got a concussion that scrambled my brains really good (yes, I was wearing a helmet.) After that forming a written sentence was very difficult for quite some time. It's still difficult, but at least now generally the sentence structure isn't egregiously flawed. Verbally and written wrong words pop in, I switch words around, and sometimes I make no sense at all. It isn't because I don't have knowledge of grammar and punctuation, but my brain simply can't do it sometimes. Reading this blog you're accepting that there's going to be things that look like typos or make no sense. It's not because I don't proofread, it's because my damaged brain doesn't see what's wrong. I try my best, but things will slip through. I don't need them pointed out, I know they're there, but if I continued to worry about them I wouldn't write at all. I didn't for quite some time. It's painful as a past master of words to use them so badly, but fortunately the words don't seem to mind.

Saturday, October 6, 2012

Every horse can teach you something

I've returned to riding Ellie the One-Eyed Wonder after taking off the summer. Riding her is not as fun as it once was, because I've been spoiled by the Taskmaster's horses. She's just not very well trained. She's just a basics horse: go, stop, steer. She does leg yield, but doesn't have one of her canter leads. However, because she's an Icy she does tolt and that beats out a lot of her missing training.

I ride Miss Ellie bareback for the most part. 1) I'm lazy 2) It's good for me to ride someone bareback. I have noticed in the last two weeks a big change in my riding that developed over the summer. I am absolutely balanced on her without needing to clench my legs. I just sit up perfectly vertical regardless of what she's doing underneath me, legs loose down her sides.

This week I rode Ellie Weds and Bean on Thursday. Bean and I were working on our Secret Project and I did some trot that was so collected it was almost piaffe. As I sat there, my hands up, totally balanced on Bean I realized it was exactly how I sit on Ellie when she tolts.

The moral of this story (which I was already quite aware of:) every horse can teach you something.

Friday, May 4, 2012

Ellie and I last summer

Ellie the One Eyed Wonder

This is Ellie, my Icelandic friend. I started riding her a year and a half ago. She's a ridiculous amount of fun and before I went to DressageLand she was the only horse I was riding other than Penny.

Last fall she got Uveitis in her right eye and they ended up having to remove it. Today was the first time I've been able to ride her since then. Not a huge change in her.

I rode bareback: walk, trot and tolt. I worked on sitting up, keeping my top half straight and upright, and a bend in my elbows. Good things to work on with her, since sitting tall on her just happens. My abs got so tired from sitting trot, even on a smooth Icy.

I'm going to try to work her back into my regular rotation. She's easy to hit after I take one of the dogs to agility. So I have Ellie, Meatball, Brie, Beany, and Condi to ride. Not to mention my own pony. I should be svelte with all this riding.