Prince: Emotional ride... in a good way!

August 2 2010

Wow. What a play time and ride Prince and I had this morning! Some totally unexpected things happened (they were totally good don't worry). It ended up being a very emotional ride for me. I wouldn't have traded it for the world. 

So we started off with Figure eights. Which were good. Prince cantered through the middle and trotted around the ends. So that was good. He did really well at maintaining his responsibilities and the whole time he was doing figure eights I was in neutral. It was really cool. 

Then we did circles. We started off to the right and when I asked Prince to canter he wasn't as connected as I would like so we switched to Falling Leaf and then came back to circles. We did do a whole lot of Falling Leaf though so that was different. Prince cantered 2 laps to the right with the belly of the rope on the ground and the same to the left. It was totally amazing! I couldn't have been have been happier! 

Then I got up and rode. Ruffian and Twosox had come up into the riding ring so I volenteered Prince and I to drive them out. It was so much fun having a purpose!! We had to make sure we were in the right zone and there were times we had to cut them off so we had to ride on a head so they would turn instead of go straight. Once they were out we closed the gate and had a nice rest. It was so much fun!!!

My sister and I are in the process of making a movie and for the last scene I need to ride Prince and my sister is riding a bike. We are hoping to film this scene tomorrow and even though I have introduced a bike to Prince before and he was fine I wasn't making any assumptions and also I have never ridden him while someone is riding a bike around. So my sister said she would ride the bike around while I rode around. just so we could see how Prince handled it. He was fine and wasn't at all worried about it. We had some fun races too! Prince and I won about half I think. That was fun! I did find our however that trotting isn't as fast as it seems to be when you are racing against a bike. One time I did ask for a canter but I wasn't able to support it so Prince just trotted faster. It was still so much fun! 

After that my sister had to leave for work so Prince and I carried on. My mom and I talked about it and she encouraged me that if I really felt confident enough and really really wanted to I could ask Prince to canter. I was a very tiny little bit nervous, but I knew that it was outside my comfort zone but not off the cliff. So I decided to try it. Prince and I set off at the trot we trotted about 1/4 of the riding ring and then I asked Prince to canter. It took about about 1/4 of the riding ring before he went into the canter, we cantered about 32ft mom and I figured out and then I stopped. I immediately got off and we finished there. 

Now the reason it was such a big deal was for many reasons but the major ones are there:

- It was our first canter

- I was 100% confident

- Even though I wasn't perfectly fluid it still felt amazing

and

- It was with Prince. Prince and I worked through this together and that is what really made is special.
 

Since I was totally new to horses when I got Prince and started Parelli I had only ridden a couple times when I was really young and so I had never cantered, let a long trotted for very long. Prince and I took our time and I learned how to ride (am learning) and Prince learned that a human riding him wasn't such a bad idea. Getting Prince to trot for a long time with a challenge but we worked through that over time but I still had never cantered, I lacked confidence because of my lack of experience.

About two years ago I tried cantering for the first time on a friends horse and it ended badly. I got bucked off, had a bad concussion and don't remember any of it. But it did effect my confidence. After that I couldn't trot for more than a short time before I was worried that Prince was going to start cantering. Even though I knew he wasn't going to. This spring I really focused on getting my confidence back and over the past couple months it has been amazing. I am totally confident to ride Prince's faster trot and I wasn't worried at all. It was truly a wonderful feeling.

One of my major struggles has been that I put a lot of pressure on myself because I wasn't confident enough to canter and it wasn't until recently that I was able to place all aside and not worry about what other people thought and just be able to have fun riding at the stage we are at.

So today when I felt confident enough to try cantering and Prince cantered and I was able to ride it, it was a very emotional thing for me. It has been a long journey to get to this point and I know that we are no where near the end, but that is okay. I love this journey. I have learned to trust God with this area in my life and in a lot of other big areas. I had to trust Him that He knew when I would be ready to canter and that His timing is perfect. To some people it may seem like a small thing, but to me it is big :)

Naturally,
~Keri