Under the Microscope

Aurora recently said she is an over-thinker, but I might have her beat. At any rate, this is the first meeting for Over-Thinkers Anonymous. 

I have been over-thinking good days and bad days, energy, expectations, visualizations, weather, and just plain showing up and doing the work. 

Today is day 5 “back to work,” and we woke up to snow. 

The weather is different, Katie isn’t coming, and I went out later in the day (yesterday was right after the horse’s had breakfast). New variables, different horse?

I started out in the barn room looking at old photos of Tumbleweed.

The first thing that hit me was how his baby play with Foxy and Rosalee was comprised of the exact same moves he busted out on Day 1-3 in the sandbox. It was him feeling his oats.

But those are largely gone now.

Different day, same pose at the mounting block.

Still enjoying a good roll.

He was a little less connected, not in my pocket, but super chill and he performed all of his walk to trot to lope, to walk transitions without any excess emotions.

We also did some backing up, lowering the head, then backing nicely, and some all over body rubs, each side. A little pole work. 

That’s it, because my purpose was to recreate yesterday’s warmup as closely as I could and try to dissect what kind of energy and expectations I am bringing to the sessions under different circumstances. What do they call that? Catching lightning in a bottle?

For example, if I had gone out there with the desire to ride him, would I have brought nervous energy with me? 

That’s what I’m going to find out by adding one new thing to this routine everyday.

We’ve got some decent temperatures in the forecast this week, so I should be able to ride quite a bit.

And even on the darkest days, there can be a bit of sun.