For the first time in a month, I FINALLY took a lesson on Nay Nay (no media at all because why would I have media?). The lesson was wonderful, the rest of my rides were… less so. It seems like I had 3 different horses on my 3 different rides. All (well, many) of Nay’s personalities came out this week.

I’ll start with the lesson. It was Tuesday morning and the weather was absolutely fantastic. It was warm and sunny and just perfect. The majority of the lesson focused on flatwork. Bending, using my inside leg/spur, and making sure Nay moved off the pressure. He’s SO MUCH BETTER going right vs left. To the right, because he is SO MUCH stronger now, we focused the order of operations: leg/spur, inside hand to get the bend, then take hand off the neck.

Eventually, the canter. Right lead is good, but we’ve lost the left lead. I mean, we got it, but it took a few tries.

We kept our jumps small. Just a small astro-turf covered box which we trotted over once and then cantered over in a circle a few times each direction. To the right, he’s super quiet while to the left? He’s fine, just occasionally gets a touch… speedy. Not fast, just speedy. The right used to feel speedy and then we found balance. Now the left feels that way. So we need to figure that out. We trotted then cantered a small gate a couple of times before calling it a day and going home.

We followed up Tuesday with a Saturday ride. It was sunny, but windy. Not like Friday (50-60 mph gusts), but still crazy windy). I considered riding outside but after putting a jump back up (as well as chairs back up), they promptly fell over. I decided to take advantage of the indoor. What I had was a tense horse. I lunged and still felt like Nay was ready to jump out of his skin. He was quiet when I led him around the outdoor, but inside? Eh. He wasn’t bad, just not good. I never even cantered. I felt like I valued life and chickened out. We did a lot of halting and backing and trotting (and scooting). It was fine, just not fun. I did trot him over some poles and a cross rail and he was fine. He even jumped a small vertical with flowers and never got fast, but I wasn’t able to get rid of the tension the entire ride. His tension brought me tension. I was out at the barn solo so I didn’t push very far either.

Sunday? I anticipated an empty barn as it was listed on the schedule book as a no lesson day but there were several cars when I arrived. I dragged my husband as I wasn’t feeling well. Wind came back, but nothing terrible and temps were back up in the 80s. By the time I was out in the ring outside, all other horses had cleared out. Nay didn’t have the calm aura of yesterday when we first walked outside, but with the warm weather, I decided not to lunge. We started off with some tension, but mostly energy. We trotted for a while, just working on moving over when I asked. I held him together to the left (scooting stopped after a minute or so — too hot for antics), but to the right? I finally gave in. He wanted to canter. All he wanted to do was canter. So if he wanted to canter? We’d canter for as long as I wanted to canter which was much longer than he wanted to canter. I then tried to canter to the left but failed. I could not uncurl him and before either of us got frustrated/confused, I stopped. Instead, we trotted our green astro-turf brush box, landed the left lead, and cantered for several minutes. Nay decided to play as much as he possibly could, but he’s Nay. He doesn’t (usually) buck or bolt, just tosses his head and flings his front legs without actually doing anything.

We ended by trotting and cantering the same jump to the right and he was quieter that way. I could have done more. He probably needed more. But we were successful and I was tired. Sometimes you end on a good note.

There are times that you think, “My horse feels like he’s going to run off with me!” But Nay was never actually running off with me. He just had energy. Why this week brought excess energy, I don’t know. I’m sure he needs to be ridden more, that can never hurt. Regardless, if he keeps up this level of energy, I’ll learn to ride it. It’s better when it’s without the attitude! Sunday was much better than Saturday, but he was still a dream to ride (and much less of a workout) on Tuesday!