Antsy-Pants, a winter pet

It's becoming a regular occurrence that Sam has what I like to call, 'ants in his pants'. I ask for a trot, we go blitz forward like there's a carrot at the end of the arena. I ask for canter, we careen forward like there's a bee on his butt. I can feel the energy. He's pretty decent about listening, to collect, and get calmer. But I have to ask several times and while he's not doing anything dangerous, it takes longer then I like and I'll admit I'm a little nervous. Leftovers from the last horse I owned who would get very naughty when she felt her oats.

I've been riding less often, not feeling very motivated to leave my warm house. Feeling too tired to drive the four miles to the barn. Waaah, poor me. But also, Sam is in great condition and it's winter, so he's feeling great! In the summer, I have slug-pony. I am starting to correlate the multiple of days off in a row with antsy-pants as opposed to Saint-Sam when there's only 1 day between rides. In the summer, I rode about 5-6x/wk. Lately I've riding about 3x/wk, four if I get my butt in gear.

Since I hadn't ridden since Saturday's lesson, I wasn't surprised when I had antsy-pants today. We trotted some ground poles and I half-halted through them all. Yeah... no jumping today. (too scary for me) So, my trainer had me work some boring 'dress-sidge' as we call it while in jump tack. Shoulder-fore work this way, that way. All the while my pony was multi-tasking between moving his legs and grinding his bit. He does that. On dressage days. Little leg yielding here and there and look, soft, compliant pony.

Saint-Sam

We trot the poles again and I get a good listening, gentle pony. Saint-Sam is back! We press our luck, work 2 sets of ground poles and through in a small jump. Weeee!! Normal hunter pony!

Lessons learned:

1. Ride Sam at least every other day, especially in the winter.
2. Keep horse's feet moving sideways/crisscrossed when he wants to barrel around the arena.
3. Keep getting more comfortable barreling around the arena otherwise I'll never get to try cross-country.
4. Stop scaring my trainer with my poker face. She has no idea if I'm scared or not. So now I'm required to yell 'woah' when it's scary so she knows I'm actually trying to stop my horse and not just breezing Sam around the arena. Besides, then my horse will know what I'm trying to do too ;)