Days 196 & 197

Saturday

You know how things start out cute and then become really annoying?
Well, a couple of weeks back, Harry started pulling all of our zippers on our coats. He would unzip them and we thought it was the cutest thing. This has now evolved into biting whenever he feels like it and it has to stop. He was awful longeing today, but probably the worst part was when he would come in real close to me, take a bite of my jacket and then run back out! We have to start getting after him for the zipper thing now and prevent this from going any further.

So since my mom has been saying that Harry responds better when weight is more back, I tried that today. He wasn't responding very well at all and kept tap dancing. I was trying my hardest to keep my weight back, but he kept throwing me forward and when I started to grip on him with my lower legs to keep balanced he got really upset and started speeding up, so I finally just settled back into a more forward weight and he was much more responsive. Still fast, but more gaited. His board was very powerful and loud. I hope he keeps it up that way! Now only to work on his manners...

Sunday

I rode Brie today and let my mom have Harry since I rode him yesterday. Today just felt like it wasn't going to be a very good day for me and it was threatening to remain that way. Brie was fighting the bit the entire time and kept trying to run out on me when I started trying to use a light leg contact. I just kept getting aggravated and she just kept going faster until finally I just stopped, removed contact, and rode normally. I was ready to start crying when I decided I had better get off. I keep getting upset because I just have these grand visions of her as a dressage horse, but clearly I don't know how to train her to be one and when I get some tidbit of advice and it doesn't work, I just feel awful about it...I guess I can't really blame myself since I don't know anything about dressage really...so maybe we'll just focus on being Paso Finos...we could always do trail class, I'm sure that desensitizing is a fantastic thing for Brie to learn to keep her brain from turning to mush.

On a non-horsey related note, we went sledding today at the barn! Trust me when I tell you there's no sledding like tractor sledding! And by that I mean being pulled on a sled by a tractor. It's the most fun thing ever! I had such a blast, even though I couldn't feel my hands for a solid 10 minutes afterwards and fell off the sled multiple times going down hills. It was totally worth it though!