Days 257 & 258

Saturday

It's days like today that make me realize that the horses aren't getting out as often as they should be, and I wish the sign hadn't been this extreme. We were walking everyone out to the pasture to run around a little bit, and my mom and brother were in front of me with Brie and Nina while I was walking Harry. We were going to split the girls from the boys, because Samantha was there and she wanted to let Tobacco out with Harry. I turn for a second to get the get to the boys' pasture and hear my brother going "MOM!". I turn and look and see my mom face down in the mud in the entrance to the girls' pasture, I couldn't even tell you where Brie was, but my brother ran over to my mom, realized he had Nina still in hand, dropped Nina's leadline and yelled for her to stop and ran over to my mom. Nina didn't know she was loose until she tried to go into the pasture again and my brother yelled at her again, then she turned around and started to walk away towards my dad and walked back towards me so I caught her. I look and my mom's now standing up and Brie is trotting around the pasture with her leadline still on. Samantha and her parents come out with Tobacco and Samanta runs over by Brie, catches her, and takes her leadline off. Once everyone is in their pastures, I get the story: Brie was so obnoxious and she went back around my mom so that the leadline was stretched across my mom's back and before my mom had the chance to switch hands or spin around to not be in the way of the rope, Brie bolted for the pasture and knocked my mom down on her way in through the gate. We were lucky that she didn't get trampled, but she does have a large bruise on her hip where she fell. I blame this incident on a combination of Brie's worsening gate manners and the feeling that they haven't been getting out. I know this is true because Brie is normally so good being lead out to the pasture, but in the past month she's been worse. I think that it culminated with being locked in for almost two weeks while everyone was away at Nationals, but that's no excuse for her behaving like that!

I rode Brie today and she was fine being ridden, not stiff, not limping. Gary decided to keep his massive trailer in the arena for the winter, so everyone bawked at that for a while. My mom rode Harry and I have to admit, he was much better the way she was riding him, the way I was describing last week that I should revert to. More forward seat and hands higher. At the end of the ride, I told her that maybe Harry isn't performance. Maybe he's pleasure. Because being able to watch him and Nina today, there's such a difference in drive between the two of them. Nina looks like a little train, with such determination in her eyes, as she works. Harry meanwhile is very calm, looking like he's taking a basket of fruit to market to sell for the day. And you know what? I don't care if he's pleasure. So what if people say he's "less of a Paso Fino" for being that, or that "we screwed him up" from when we first bought him. If he is able to be that calm and relaxed in what he's doing, I wouldn't want to wind him up just to force him back into a state of mind where he was clearly upset, back in his early days of riding. If he is calm and happy in his work, then I know I did my job, and I can tell that he is happy from the look in his eyes as he works.

We took a ride out to Dover Saddlery today to get saddle pads, but you know we came back with more than that. It was just me and my mom, and as we were in the car, we were talking about the Paso Fino circuit and realized this is the only breed we know of outside of racing Thoroughbreds where the trainers do the majority of the showing. Where's the fun in that? Being able to say that you can afford to support the trainer and buy a top quality horse and then not even be able to ride? That doesn't sound like much fun to me. And the worst thing is that if you aren't someone who pays for a trainer to ride for you in your classes, you get made fun of! You get told either to your face or behind your back that you aren't good enough. Isn't the point of owning a horse to be able to enjoy it yourself?

Sunday

We did a photo shoot for ourselves today! Here are a couple of my favorite pictures.

After all that, I rode Harry. I rode him for forward and with higher hands and he was completely different! He was so much better. He wasn't leaning into the bit at all and he felt more collected. He was still a little pokey, but after some circle work, he was doing beautifully. I really think that the deeper seat and lower hands works better on Brie than Harry because she is just going beautifully with that. But Harry likes to be ridden forward and light, so that's what I'll give him. Now we need to get back to our previous goal: largo without breaking or pacing!

Day 190

Saturday


As you all know, I was super excited to feed them all their Christmas salads today! I made them with iceberg lettuce, golden delicious apples, and baby carrots. Brie, Harry, and Nina each got their own. I think it's safe to say that they enjoyed them! Harry has found a new favorite food in lettuce =] But before they got to eat their salads, they had to face the big scary tarp in the middle of the aisle. Paco put it up to keep the heat on our side since there aren't any horses on the other end and they all freaked out when they stepped out of their stalls and saw it!

After I fed them their salads, we tried to teach Harry some Bella Forma. For those of you who don't know, it's basically like a confirmation class. The horse has two handlers on the ground and we hold lines attached to his bridle and walk around withe him to show his gait. We did this with Nina when she was little, and my brother wanted to try it with Harry because it was Christmas. He tried with my mom and I could tell they were getting stressed, especially my brother because he was having Nina-like expectations of Harry, who knows nothing about Bella Forma. I went and tried with my mom and Harry I got scared at one point that Harry would kick me because he swung his butt over towards me, so I dropped the rope like I'm supposed to and he freaked, bolted out on my mom and got the rope twisted around his leg. He was running in a circle around her until she managed to get him in close enough to stop and untangle the rope and after that, no more Bella Forma for Harry. We don't want to get killed and we don't want him to break a leg. It's really the sort of thing that you're supposed to start with a horse when they're young.

So after that, we rode for a little bit before we stopped and talked to Paco and Gary for a long time. We cleaned em up, said Merry Christmas, and then left...only to return so I could grab my camera hanging on Brie's stall. So now I can show you pictures!!

Day 159

I worked with Harry today. What a little punk, he tried to rear when I was going to flex him on the right side! At first, I got off and started to flex him from the ground, then I got back on and of course while everyone was watching he started to act up again. He started spinning me around until I kicked him to go forward instead of backwards. Then he stood still and slowly gave me his head on the right side. We did flexing for a few minutes until he wasn't giving me any problems anymore and then we worked on walking. He has a nice walk when he isn't all riled up, but after that it's kind of hard to get him to walk again.

His corto was kind of all over the place because Ray was in the arena cowboying another horse, so Harry was nervous. He settled down only when Ray left into a nice corto. After working a corto for a while, we tried to largo. He had a good largo for a while and then started to break into a canter. By that time his little brain was fried from the heat, so we all decided to go for a walk outside around the property. After walking up to Gary's house and talking to his dad for a while, Harry seemed to have the walking-outside-thing pretty much down pat and we walked very calmly while Brie was the one acting up with my mom. She just wanted to charge everything! She's so goofy, I swear. One day she's walking with a super loose rein outside, confronting deer and the next she's this insane little dinosaur!

Afterwards, we gave them all nice baths and my mom did a little talking to Gary about Brie's leg since it looked kind of swollen today. He suggested that if it keeps up even after we had the steroid injection in her hock that we should bring her down to the University's animal hospital so that they could study her and have more of a cutting edge team working to find out another solution. He made a good point: the vet won't think about it for very long, but she might serve as a good couple of class sessions for a whole swarm of new-thinking vet students! So we'll just have to keep an eye out for any more leg problems.

Day 99

I didn't really get to ride Harry today =[ my mom and Paco rode him. He doesn't want to flex his head to the right or really walk for them, so they worked on it. It wasn't even worth me to work with him because, until football season is over, weekends are irregular. Like next weekend, I'm going to a school horse show again. Hopefully I do better this time. Gary said he'd try to make it out to come and watch me. Part of me hopes he doesn't because I don't want him to think less of me because of the quality of the school's barn compared to the beauty of his.

I did get to ride Brie a lot today! That made me really happy. She's had a two week break because everyone's been focused on Harry. She was actually pretty good today. I didn't want to do too much because she hasn't been exercised in a while. We walked around in the round pen with Harry and then when we went inside, she wanted to largo so I let her largo her little heart out and stretch her legs. Then I took all of her tack off except for a bithanger and we ride bareback. It was hard, but ultimately good for my balance and her just to change it up a bit.

I can't even imagine what it would be like if I went away to school in another state and had to leave them behind. Even Nina. It makes me so sad that I never get to ride her, especially because I actually partially own her. But we went for a stroll on a lead rope and I let her eat grass. I wish I had my own car, that way I could drive out on Thursdays when I don't have class, or even Tuesdays after my one class of the day.
Maybe I'll start working Tuesdays. I'll pick up a little extra money every paycheck. I'm pretty sure I'll still need Thursdays to catch up on Wednesday night's homework I miss because of the lesson.

I need a car.

Day 81

One word to describe today: phenomenal.

Gary and Georgina were out today. It's been such a long time since we were united! We talked about the Youth Mundial, which is the kids' world championships, in Puerto Rico last week. Georgina sadly didn't place but they said the USA team didn't really do so well anyways compared to the Latin countries. Figures.

Lunged Harry like yesterday. While lunging him, it occurred to me that he has a big horse body and tiny little horse legs. You don't notice it at first, but it's kind of funny when you do. He's cute in that way. He worked amazingly on his own and did an great board. I took him in the outdoor, which in the walk on the gravel from the indoor to the outdoor led in a huge split in his hoof. He worked well out there though and didn't want to take off. Outside we worked on our largo and he's got it pretty down pat. He never broke into a canter. I think I'll put him in pleasure the rest of this year, maybe one performance class in Ohio in three weeks, but we'll continue working on largo control until next year.

After the outdoor, I took him into one of the grassy paddocks next to the outdoor arena that had some decently sized trees and we walked. I didn't want to just go out in the open yet. We went back in and he worked very nicely, better than ice expected, riding next to three other horses. All in all, he had a great day and I am so proud of him!

Brie was giving my brother a bit of a hard time, but that's probably because he doesn't ride her often and didn't know how to handle her since before I started working with her. She was great for me. We went around the property again, raced up "the mountain" in back and zig sagged around the hay field in front.

Life and weekends are so much happier now that I know what to do with Brie. She's just fantastic outside and in good moods most of the time now. Win win situation!

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?