Laziness, Part II

Sunday brought me another day of lessons and then going to Mollie's barn... Unsurprisingly, I just didn't feel like tacking up.

I'm sure this had nothing to do with going to a PBR/Line Dancing the night before until 3am....

I eventually got my butt in gear after lessons and took Molls out to groom her and throw her bridle on for day two of our bareback shenanigans.  We moseyed around at the walk for a while and then got going.  She was actually super soft in my hand and was going around nice and round and through the entire time, which definitely makes her easier to sit.  I even set my phone up on a post to video us doing trot/canter serpentines, then went to review it later and realized all it was pointed at was the ceiling.  Go me.

One thing that this bareback riding has been good for is that I can really feel what the heck is going on with her body.  I love my saddle and while it doesn't even have the humongous knee/thigh blocks that most dressage saddles do I still feel like it's "too much" sometimes.  But what kind of rider would I be if I didn't complain about my saddle periodically? ;)  Under saddle her left lead feels SO much better than her right, but bareback she's actually better right.... To the left her entire spine turns in towards the center of the ring (and resultingly stabs me in the left thigh.... fun stuff).  Definitely something to keep in mind when riding with a saddle.

Before leaving the ring I figured I'd get some conformation shots since I'm coming up on her 17th birthday and like to take them yearly.  Overall I'm not loving her top line right now but when I come to terms with the fact that she hasn't been ridden more than on the weekends since the Spring I guess it's not too awful.... She's never really had such a pronounced wither either and I'm not sure if that's just increasing with age or she's lost some muscling over it.  Anyways, here they are.

Not so thrilled with her muscling right now (or the fact that she appears so downhill... Eek! But at any rate I really really like her weight right now.