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@DanteDressageNerd - glad you're back!
As of this morning, Ana is back to normal; no discharge anywhere and no coughing (she coughed a bit yesterday during our ride). We did have a storm roll through overnight so maybe the climate change has helped her feel better? It's certainly helped with the flies.
Yesterday, for the first time since discovering this new way of riding, we did both a canter circle right and a canter circle left. She wasn't as willing to take the rein down on the left but her back stayed up and soft and her transitions were nice.
This whole time I've been concerned with my position, making tweaks here and there thinking that it's the key to making Ana go better for me. It turns out capturing and recycling the energy is what sets Ana up to go well and then I can make little tweaks like shifting my weight back; I had been working especially hard on my canter seat; turns out I don't need to do anything fancy; when her back is up, it's so pleasant to sit on, that I'm automatically sitting better.
Yesterday, after our ride, I went to the HofC to shop the sale bins; I got 5 shirts for $5 each! And they are not cheap shirts; one is Pikeur that was originally priced at $95! So I made out like a bandit. I also got new gloves but I paid full price; Roeckls are just not cheap but I love them, they are so pretty and have that extra reinforcement where needed.
Wore my gloves and one of the shirts for filming today; I was so determined to go to the barn that I found little window in between the rain and storms. Poor Ana had been kept up for 2 nights in a row due to weather so she was extra hot yesterday and today she full on spooked and nearly stopped by heart. Sometimes I can't tell that a spook is coming and that always freaks me out, she'll be like "la, la, la, going for a walk, WTF!!!!!!" (back drops out from under me). And then she'll walk on like nothing happened whereas I'm still trying to get my heart beat back to normal.
Even though it was a bit cooler, the humidity was miserable. We ended up not cantering and doing less trotting than usual and focused more on walking and lateral stuff. At the end of our ride I remembered thinking "well this was a waste" and that moment I asked her to halt from my seat with no rein contact whatsoever and she halted like a pro and I was like "that was AWESOME!" - so sometimes I set out to accomplish XYZ during our ride and accidentally stumble across something awesome like that. So it wasn't a waste.
To be honest I'm still a little freaked out about last week's fainting spell so I'm being a bit more careful than usual; I joined a support group for others who have the same condition and I think reading their posts is only causing me to be more concerned about this than maybe I need to be. After today's spook, it took an hour for my heart rate to get back to normal or at least it felt like that. DH is also concerned about me and has enlisted the neighbors to check on me. I was doing a 3 mile walk yesterday, and the neighbor's drove by 3 times and waved at me; I just had this feeling that DH phoned them and asked them to look in on me. It kind of made me feel like I'm on the Truman show, you know how they wave at Truman and he thinks they are just being friendly when they are paid actors? I need to get my independence and confidence back; I was looking into a heart monitor watch you can wear that will beep if your heart rate gets too out of control, but that might spook Ana so that's something to consider.