Days 65 and 66

Sorry I'm late with this one--I've just finished my first year of college! I was bogged down by studying and moving out worries over the weekend but I'm here now! I'm gonna write them in pseudo-past tense because it's easier for me to remember things that way.

Saturday

I worked a lot with Harry today. He's surprisingly calm lunging without the pole. I'm thrilled about that because I find having to walk around the pole and not trip all while trying to not get dizzy and focus on the horse in front of you a very difficult task, especially the not tripping part. It's so nice that I can lunge him like normal now. He is kind of uppity in the clockwise direction, not sure why, but we'll work on it.

It's the strangest thing too. He's perfectly fine staying on the rail while he's gaiting but he won't keep his butt on the rail when we walk. Any ideas why this is? He doesn't really understand leg yields yet and I do get a little nervous trying to do them with him because I don't want him to freak out, but I just keep reminding myself that I have control and that I will NOT be thrown off or injured in any sort of way. Of course this is not ignorance. It's confidence. I'm confident I can get off before then!

I rode Nina today. She's a tricky one. I guess part of the reason that I'm not good at riding her is because I never get to! My brother is always the one who gets to ride her. For me, she seems very all over the place (because I don't know what to do with her), but hopefully my brother has better luck in shows. I want to start riding her more often because, after all, she is the horse in my name!

Brie didn't really work that hard today. I mostly sat on her while listening to my parents talk to Gary, the stable owner, about Spectrum two weeks ago. It sounds amazing, I wish I could've gone. So Brie didn't really do anything. She got it easy today.

Sunday

I won't go into full detail, but today SUCKED and not because of the horses. Harry was absolutely PHENOMENAL. His gait was perfect, the kind of gait that will sweep a performance class. I like to think that I can feel the fino in him, but I don't want to push him. He's having a little trouble keeping his back legs going the same speed as the front and I saw it on the board when my brother rode. Sometimes he gets unsure of what to do with those feet so he hesitates and it makes the gait sound off. He also has a problem of rushing the board and going into it at a canter so I'm trying to break him of that habit by stopping him and making him back up before we take the board.

The Michigan show is in two weeks! (fingers crossed) Hopefully we will actually go through with this show! It will be the first show we've done this year so far and I'm wondering who we will take. Since I know nothing about Nina's abilities, I'll leave that to my brother. But now it's down to Harry and Brie, since we only have a two horse trailer. Harry did fantastically yesterday but he's kind of nervous passing and being passed. Brie has been doing wonderfully consistently but, well...she has past history with freakouts in the show ring. This is going to be a tough decision to make. Should I bring Brie, the horse I've been working on for the past 8 months to get to this point, or should I bring Harry, the horse who shows lots of potential but I've never shown him before?