Sometimes the best lessons are self-taught.

It's been a relatively quiet week so far.  I intend to do some productive riding in the morning, but otherwise, I have done 0 real riding this week.  I took Amber on a trail ride Sunday.  The bugs made her absolutely miserable!  Despite spraying her down with plenty of fly spray (which usually works fantastically at home), the bugs literally bit the blood out of her.  She was thoroughly over it by the time we got home.  Now I'm dealing with the aftermath, which quite frankly, I'm not sure what the aftermath is.  She has some little scabs coming up on her legs.  Looks like more like welts from the bug bites, not scratches, but I can't rule out scratches either.  We did walk through a pretty nasty, stagnant area of a pond, and she was wearing open fronts.  They don't hold water, they are neoprene lined, but I'm sure they were at least a little moist on her legs for a while.

Amber was not impressed with the pond.

So I had M help me scrub her legs down tonight and picked all the scabs off and applied some good ol' MTG.  I'm *pretty* sure it's just bug bites.

Speaking of M, she missed her lessons last week, so this week she was all out of sorts.  She really depends on frequent consistency in her riding to thrive.  Yesterday I threw a curve ball at her.  I want her prepared to ride like a big girl this weekend when we go back to try Unicorn, because I want her to jump some little 2' stuff so I can really see how they fare over "real" fences.  So I had her jump a little 18"-2' course with Amber.  That doesn't sound like much of a challenge, but she has not jumped in weeks, and she has not jumped more than a crossrail since early winter of last year!  Add to that the fact that Amber can be careless and a freight train to small fences.  If that's not mean enough for you, I gave her some alfalfa cubes pre-ride and had M ride in Amber's dressage/flatting bit. Lol...

M surprised and horrified me.  As far as navigating the course, keeping Amber light and rhythmic, she did great.  She was even able to adjust her stride to add/take out on the outside line.  Her approach to the first fence?  Like a foreign language.  It was either jackknife turns, or weaving randomly through the other jumps instead of simply riding to the outside.  The rest of the course, beautiful though.  Today I took it back a step, and had her canter a "course" without jumps, to force her to think only about her approach and how she rides between the jumps - and that went very well!  The other thing we are trying to master is graduating to real contact.  I've always had her ride on a loose rein, because Amber is so finicky with her mouth, and her hands just weren't mature enough for that.  Transitioning to taking up contact is really challenging her muscle memory.  I want to get her some rainbow reins, but for now I had her use my web reins so that she can use the bands to "mark" her place.  Problem is, she shortens the reins, but puts her hands farther and farther forward to avoid having contact with Amber.  I am stressing with her that her hands don't really "do" anything - they hold steady while the legs and seat push the body up into them.  The last thing I want her to do is get in the habit of fidgeting with her hands trying to get a headset, forgetting to apply her seat and leg.

Her distraction has also been seen in her tacking up.  Yesterday, she had the bit twisted in Amber's mouth when she came out.  Thankfully, I fixed it before she got on.  But today...today, she learned the hard way.  I'm at the point where I am going to have to start letting her learn some things in that manner.  She comes out to the arena, and I'm already out there fixing the jumps.  I look over, and as she goes to get on, the saddle slides down to Amber's belly, and she plops off to the ground.  Amber, being the saint she is, just stands there with this "seriously, kid?" face on.  I have warned Macy about checking her girth before mounting many, many times.  One time she actually came out of the barn with NO GIRTH!  So at a point, I decided the best way for her to remember to double and triple check her tack, is to let her have an oops moment.  And it was glorious!

It does make me nervous though, all things considered.  Even the most saintly horse is not guaranteed to put up with that crap.  Once she gets her own horse, she will be responsible for remembering these things that she is constantly forgetting.  Maybe not having me as a safety blanket will help her be more conscientious?  I can only hope so.  She will always have adult supervision, but that adult supervision will be her parents who are not horse people.  At least there will be someone if she gets hurt.