Sunday, June 20, 2010

New riding boots!

During the last clinic with David my poor riding boots slowly died. They have been quite ugly for a while, but now they almost fell apart. The heavy rain was too much for them. They had survived for 10 years so I felt it was time to let them go.

So this week I went to the shop to see if they had any boots that fitted me. I have tiny feet and quite thick calves so I wasn't sure if I was going to find anyone, but I was wrong. When I told the lady who worked at the store that I had thick calves she just laughed at me. So we discussed what kind of boots I wanted and for which purpose, and eventually she found a pair of Mountain Horse Richmond High Rider Boots. They were a bit tight around the calves, but got elastics in the sides. They were also a bit too high around the knee, but after some use they will get a few cm shorter.

They look like this:


I tried them out for the first time yesterday. First of all it was quite hard getting up on the horse with new boots, had to pull down the zipper to get the flexibility in the knee. They were a bit uncomfortable to ride with at first, mostly because they were new and stiff. They give loads of stability around the ankle and once they have been "ridden in" I think they will be great!

Until then I'll have to ride with some protection on my heels :P

On a side note, Bosco was great yesterday. I had a short session in the round pen where we had some fights but mostly an understanding of what we were doing. After riding in the round pen I took him out for a short hack on the riding path, there I wanted to see how well the gas and brake worked together. After trotting for a while I asked for canter, as always he started in the left canter and after a while I did a transition to trot, then focused on getting him in the right canter. After a few tries I managed it, and on a straight line aswell! woho! A few 100 metres further on I started to push him a bit, he gently excelerated, I pushed some more, and gently he excelerated again and there was no tension or wanting to run away. So I started thinking about the brakes, funny thing with this horse is if you think hard enough about stopping, he will stop. Almost at once, and as a result I almost fell off. Haha! Nothing wrong with either the gas or brakes on this boy!