Tempis and treadmills

Remember when Balmoral was 75, breezy and no humidity?! Ahhhhh
PC: J. Kaiser

My goal is to show PSG, my freestyle and Equitation at regionals this year, but I've also started to look a little beyond that, too! Like ... maaaaaybe I can take a peek at the I-1? The only "new" things are whole canter pirouettes, two tempis, and a baby canter zig zag. The full pirouettes are not an issue, they are actually easier than a half one for some reason. Probably because I have a case of the dumbs when I do them. But most of my worries come from learning the two tempis! Well, might as well just jump in the deep end!

The other day I played with the 2-tempis a little bit! I have never ridden the twos, not even on a schoolmaster so it was the blind leading the blind here. But slowly I am finding the rhythm. I can get about 4, before I start to lose the balance and jump in the canter. I'll slowly start to add more as we get better at this. In the I-1 you have to do 7 changes in the line of 2s. And by the time you get to Grand Prix I believe you have to do nine changes. So you gotta start somewhere! I figure I would keep doing 4, and making them good for a while and then start to add a couple more - instead of just trying to flail through 7 when it's not necessary right now.

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And last week during a super insta-sweat day, I took Hampton down the road for a session on the water treadmill! We are so lucky that our farm is about 1/4 mile from a large race training facility. Might as well take advantage of that! I didn't even need to trailer. Just walked my horse down there like the hillbillies we are.

At first Hamp was a little skeptical of this contraption, but willingly walked in. And the two guys were absolute pros on teaching horses about treadmills. Once Hampton figured out all he needed to do was walk, he relaxed and actually looked pretty happy and cocky about figuring out this new game.

The guys said most horses start blowing and puffing after about 5 minutes for their first time on the treadmill. Hampton did so well he ended up doing 8 minutes and was not winded whatsoever. Gradually, you increase their time to about 20 minutes. The race horses work on the treadmill daily!

It cost me $60 so this certainly won't be daily for Hampton, but maybe every other week? It was super cool to see how he had to work all his muscles, and I think it might be good to add to his program. Especially since he enjoyed it and really took to it!

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On out way walking back the owner of the farm drove up next to us in his car. He said "Excuse me. I would like to know why you were on my property with that horse."

I was like, "Um we were using the aquatread and we just live down the road so I walked?" And he sort of laughed and said no problem and drove away.

I mean, does it look like I am stealing a race horse sir? Look at my horse. LOOK AT HIM. lol. But the fella was nice he just didn't know what the hell we were doing. #wehilljacks

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Next plans include a show in August, and hopefully a clinic!