Wednesday, March 30, 2011

A new sidesaddle candidate?

I rode Brigit in my C&W last night with the Cashel wedge pad underneath, it really made a difference! The saddle wasn't nearly as uphill as it was. Success!

We played around with the dressage tests a bit more again and all went well until our second time through it. First time through I trotted the whole thing. Second time through I added the cantering bits. It started off not too bad and then kindof went into the pot. Brigit does this thing when she isn't paying attention. She drifts to the wall, ends up off-balance, jams her head up which results in a loss of power from behind and we end up in a nice discombobulated mess and then she lurches back into a canter with her head way up there. This is something we definitely need to work on some more. All in all though she was good and we ended on a good note.
I'm humming & hawing over whether to enter in a dressage schooling show in 2 weeks. I really want to but not if we're going to have issues like the one above at the show. I have to decide by Friday....

After my ride on Brigit my friend I jokingly said to a friend "Hey lets try the sidesaddle on your horse!". She willingly obliged and we swapped the sidesaddle onto her gelding. He wasn't very sure of the sidesaddle at first, mostly you could tell he felt a little lost without that right leg to guide him. But in no time at all we were trotting and cantering around the arena! What a good boy!

What do you think? Should I steal him and make him into a sidesaddle pony?

Here's a short video of us trotting.

Original Video - More videos at TinyPic

Pretty good for his first time!

3 comments:

  1. Playing catvch up on my fav. blogs since I was out of town for a few days.

    YES - do it... enter the show! You will never know how your horse will act at the show until you just do it ss. I have a gelding who is the WORST at home.. but he gets amused by the surroundings at the show and to date has always been wonderful. I think he has ADD for horses!

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  2. btw - does your C&W have linen or leather panels? I thought about using a wedge pad - but dismissed it thinking it would slip under the leather panels on my C&W sidesaddle.

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  3. I'm so torn about the show. I had a lesson the other night and felt like our riding had just fallen apart. Ugh. She usually does better at shows as well, must be the distraction!

    My C&W has linen panels...although I noticed I'm going to need to do some stitching soon, the material is coming loose in places! I don't think the old girl is fairing all that well under hard riding again.
    I think if you tried one of those cashel cushion pads, it would be ok under leather panels. The foam is pretty sticky it seems. If not, you could always put something on the pad or panels to give it a bit of extra stick.

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