Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Sun and Shadow

Some of the best laid plans can go awry. They can get twisted with heartache, sorrow and darkness. I have ridden my horse exactly three times in the last month. Once about two weeks ago, and I rode her twice yesterday.

The pain is still too fresh so I will only say that my family needed me at home. That combined with the brand new saddle fit issue kept me from riding. How did I discover that my saddle didn't fit after having no problems in the past three years?

I was trying to progress as a rider and move my mare up a level in her training. I had cantered fences before, but slowly, no pressue. I was trying to follow my trainer's advice and be more agressive, and let my mare canter forward up to the jump.  What did it get me?  A whole lot of bruises and grass stains on a new pair of breeches.

Now the mare-beast has given me attitude, but she has never bucked me off, or bucked with the kind of severity she showed me that day. So I had to wonder why, and when I started investigating the saddle fit, I realized that it really was not a good fit.

*SIGH!*  So for the next couple of weeks after the unceramonious dumping I worked with my local tack store to find out what Seneca needed and what I could live with.  Enter my new saddle. Not that I bought it at the tack store. I found what I liked there, but eBay is definitely a rider's best friend. I found the next model up from the saddle I tried from the tack store for less than half of what the tack store wanted. I could not pass that up.

So I bid on it, set my eBay bid sniper app on my phone(oh yeah it's a bad ass app) and then sat back to wait.  I won the saddle, had to wait some more. In the mean time my local eventers group got another training session with Chris together. I signed up hoping, praying that my saddle would arrive in time.

My lesson was at 6:30pm.  My saddle arrived at noon. I quickly swapped the medium gullet out for the narrow my girl needed and then with a quick double check of the fit I saddled up.  OMG! The first time I sat in the new saddle was like settling in to the leather interior of a fine sports car.  I am so in love.

Even better after my trial ride I took a break in the house, had lunch, waited for super hubs to get home and then we loaded up for the hour long trip to the venue for our lesson with Chris.  It was fabulous!
We are progressing, and Chris is happy, plus the new saddle was great!

I had to scratch from our last three outtings, but I have a couple of trail rides, a couple of jumper shows, and the starter trial in June comeing up.  Then we will most likely be done with horse trials for the summer. There might be some dressage shows, and more jumper shows in our future but we'll see.

So even with the bitter ache of sorrow a little sunlight still falls.