On This Day

On this day....

A seedless watermelon was developed in 1951 by Purdue University.

Also looking vaguely melon shape was my semi feral mare tonight.  Fortunately for me, she is not the typical 8 to 10 pounds of a watermelon, as that probably wouldn't leave enough room for a saddle.

Also on this day, I had another riding lesson.  Yippe.  On the plus side, there was improvement.  Sounds simplistic to work on things such as bending, maintaining rhythm, and steady contact.  But add in a horse with fear issues from snatch and spank type of training and a rider who is also struggling with her fitness (or lack therof) and it ends up being more than enough to work on for an hour.

But, the plus side is that progress appears to have been made.  The right circles were much better than the left.  Left, she has a tendency to just thoroughly resist and not be able to relax.  I noticed that she just seems stiffer & more sore on the left side in general on the ground, so perhaps some more gentle stretching and massaging to see if that helps.

And I realized that I need to pick my hands up a little bit more.  I just need to fix my hand to prevent it from creeping down low towards her neck and back towards my knee on the circle.  Easier said than done.  For some reason, just quite difficult for me on the left and an absolute non-issue on the right.  Definitely something to be aware of and work on in this next week.

And just because I can and because I'm a nerd at heart, I'd like to share this joke.