A picture's worth a thousand words....

I asked T if he'd be willing to tape me riding again tonight. In hindsight, I'm not sure if I'm glad he said yes, or if I'd rather have gone on in my deluded, yep, my posture's fine, state. Yikes, yikes, yikes! Well, now at least I know what I have to work on! It's a long list, unfortunately. I'll get a clip uploaded tomorrow, and you can see what I mean. Ugh!

Since I've been a bit concerned about Sunny getting hollow and poking holes in the upper atmosphere with his nose, and I really do want to know if it's me or the saddle or who knows what causing it, I pulled the English saddle out tonight. It needs a good oiling - tomorrow night's project - but so does all the tack at the moment.

I haven't used this saddle much. It was my mom's, passed on to me when she stopped riding, and it's not been on a horse over a handful of times. I ordered new canvas backed leathers not that long ago, and the girth is just a simple cotton web one, I've used approximately once. I really didn't want to worry about a rotten leather-related accidental dumping, so I checked everything fairly carefully before we left. Forgot the leather punch, though, and the breast collar needs an extra hole or two....

The one and only time I had this saddle on Sunny previously, I longed him in it and he took issue with the way the saddle flaps sounded when the wind caught them - the one and only time I've ever seen him crow-hop. And he got to do circles until he could be civilized again. After that one time we were busy trail riding, and I never got back to it.

Since I've been riding more this summer, I decided to forgo the longeing and simply get on and go. Of course, I picked a windy, storm-clouds piling up evening when all the horses were twitchy and nervous. But with the rest of the herd safely locked in the upper lot, and a cameraman handy, I decided I wasn't going to back down and chicken out.

I had T give me a leg up to preclude saddle slippage and sat there thinking, "breathe, darn it!" to myself.

Sunny sniffed my foot, sighed, and waited for me to ask him to walk. Such a dramatic reaction, from my high-strung Arabian. lol! And his lack of concern was the bright spot of my evening! :-) It had to be, because watching the video back, I look like a sack of potatoes, spent most of the time looking down, and missed my diagonals right, left, and sideways.

But, Sunny picked up both leads correctly, answered my leg, and didn't flip out over the strange-feeling saddle. And, even though his nose was still stuck out, he moved a lot more freely than he's been doing in the western one. So, English saddle it is, at least for the time being.