Days 282 & 283

Saturday

Got out late, so I had even less time to ride. There were also a ton of people at the barn, so I had small space to work in. I managed to force my way in there and longe Brie and work on our flexibility program, which she is getting better at. I think she's getting bored with it now, so I have to figure out something new to add to it.

She was fairly calm while riding, but we're still working on headset. She's gotten really lazy without the pressure to show, so it's taking a lot of work getting her back into show mode.

As show season approaches, I find myself in the same place that I usually end up at this time of year -- wondering if I even want to show. On one hand, it's fun, but it's only fun if you win, which I don't do too often...I can't help but get the feeling that, despite all of my effort, everyone thinks I'm completely incapable of doing anything "right" with horses because I continue to ride horses that don't place firsts while my brother, for example, took over Nina and always wins firsts. It's just very discouraging.

And while I like going to have fun with my horses for the majority of the day and spend all that time with them, I feel like I'd rather be going trail riding or something. I don't know. Since I started riding, I've had this shift in interest from showing to trail riding. It just gets so boring going around in the arena, doing almost the same things every week, constantly trying to make your horse perfect...maybe they just want to relax a bit and go sightseeing.

Sunday

I got to ride Harry today! He was a bundle of anxiety and no matter how many circles I tried to do, he never really calmed down for me...for my mom, he was better, but for me, not too great. He walked really nicely, so I guess that's a plus, since I've struggled with getting him to walk calmly. But he only stayed in gait going over the soundboard and that's just because he's vain.

Brie is putting my patience to the test, once more. Now that I know she knows exactly what I want from her (to stand still at the mounting block), she is seeing if I can keep making her do that. It took at least a few tries to make her stand still at the block, and even then, she wasn't right next to it and I had to scoot it over.

I found out recently that one of my friends got an internship at a barn in Florida. I'm so jealous of her...I wish that I got to go work under a professional and spend my entire day with horses.

I've also decided that, after much thought, I will be ending this blog at Day 300. I was going to do an entire year (365), but after 3 actual years of writing, I've lost a lot of interest in it. I feel my posts getting repetitive lately with no real development happening and want to focus more of my energies into seeing a change in attitude both in myself and in my horses. This blog has really been an inspiration for myself during times where I feel like I'm at a standstill and I'm thankful for it. But with graduation fast approaching and the impending uncertainty of life after college, I don't even know if I'll be able to make  it to 365 days in the near future. So I would rather end on a finite note than to be constantly wondering if I will ever have the time or opportunity to come back to this again.

Day 235

Sunday

First off, let me say that with only one more view, this blog will have hit 11,000 views! Thank you all so much, it's great to know that someone is actually reading my journey.

I got Brie today, which was nice. I didn't go out yesterday because of a school-related function, but my mom said that she is definitely ordering calming supplement for Harry again because he was ballistic yesterday. She wanted to try him again, so I got to ride Brie, which was nice, because I haven't ridden her for a week or so. She was go, go, go today, as no one rode her yesterday. She was pretty stiff and limping a little, but eventually she worked it out. Poor Brie. She's still so young (11 years old) and she already has arthritis. It just breaks my heart. Once we had all the speed out of her system, we worked on our performance walk, because I want to put her in a performance class.  I figure A) Why not? and B) There are less horses in performance classes so she shouldn't get as nervous as she would in a huge pleasure class. I really hope that I can bring her to State Fair. I don't even care about winning with her, I just want to calmly make it through the whole ordeal and show her that it's nothing to be scared of.

After Brie, I got on Harry for a short bit. He was way better today, but his movements were very vertical. I wasn't really used to that, but he was gaiting nicely and behaving like he should. Now he's been having problems keeping his headset, and I don't want to use a martingale, so I have to keep checking him and reminding him to set his head. His largo broke a lot, so now we have to work on that again. I hate feeling like I'm back at square one with him after that period of him working brilliantly, but I just have to go back to basics again.

I got to ride Nina today! So, we're thinking of going down to this international show with her next week in Florida, and we would only show in three classes: one for my mom, one for my brother, and one for me. Since I don't usually show her and this is not the arena to be testing out pleasure classes when she's been in performance her whole life, I'm going to do a costume class with her! I haven't done costume class since Brie stopped showing, because she is the costume horse, but I thought that it might be fun with Nina and she's so well tempered that it shouldn't bother her that I would ride her with a long skirt on. We brought the skirt today to test her with it and sure enough, she was just fine!

We also brought the shipping boots, as it's about a 15 hour drive, to test her with and she was fine with those too, which is surprising because she hates the farrier so much, we figured that would transfer over into a fear of thing secured around her legs, but she was just fine. When we originally got them, we got them for Brie when she was about 4 years old, and she flipped out, so we never used them. Today we tried them back on Brie and aside from taking a couple of minutes to get used to walking a short distance in them, she was fine. Then we tried Harry. I thought for sure he would freak out, but he was good too! I love when horses give you good surprises =]

Lastly, I rode Taco. The only way that I could bring Brie to State Fair is if we bring Taco in Jane's 2 horse trailer, so Taco HAS to go to State Fair. He was surprisingly good as well! My mom says it's because she rode him yesterday, but usually it doesn't matter how many times you ride him, he does what he wants. He tried to pull a few tricks at the start of the ride, but I quickly corrected him and we went along great! I'm working on not breaking into a canter on the corners and figuring out exactly what I need to do to get him to have a wonderful board, along with making it a goal to slow what I'm now calling his largo into a corto, because his default gait speed is very fast and I'm thinking that if he goes any faster, since he's already breaking on the turns, that he will break into a canter. It might be easier to slow him down rather than try to speed him up. But if he shows like he rode today, he'll definitely place in a class! Which is how it should be, as he was a National Champion in the good old days! 

So now this weekend is the last weekend of practice my mom and brother have before the show next week. I'm so excited, I hope everything works out and we actually go, and that we make it safely down there, and that we win! That way we can prove those people who were supposed to be our friends (no names) wrong and we get to show that our best horse can run with the very best international competition.

Day 150

No word from the vet. We'll call tomorrow when they're back in office.

We just brushed up Brie and let her out in one of the small pastures with a little bit of grass while we rode today. She seemed happy as a clam and was even napping when I went out to go get her. I rinsed her off after I brought her in, fly sprayed her and bleached her feet before putting her back in her stall with a carrot (or five).

While my mom warmed up Nina today, I worked with Harry some more. I really do need to strengthen my core. I never was able to stay committed to a workout before, but now that I see how it's affecting my riding, I really do need to start and stick with it! It's getting hard for me to remain in posture and Harry feels it, jolts forward which throws me further off balance and then we have to start all over again! After my mom let my brother take over Nina, she worked with me and my darn hands! It was hard for me to not focus on Harry's speed and just focus on my hands and his headset, but by the end of the day, his head looked beautiful and the gait was following. I worked some transitions in a circle again like yesterday since he was pacing on the rail, walked him, then handed him over to my mom, who took him for a reward ride outside.

Next week I have to really nail transitions, because the weekend after that we head to Michigan for another show.

Here's a funny story. We were pulling into the driveway to the stable today and this dog was chasing a car behind us then saw our car and headed over by us. She had no collar on, so we put her in our trunk and drove down the street to look for where she lived. We ended up finding her house because a neighbor recognized her, so we tried to leave her there but she followed our car back to the stable. Meanwhile, Ray is riding on the street and sees us coming with this dog chasing our car and tries to ignore it and go in the driveway, but as soon as the dog sees him, she goes after his horse! I think she nipped the horse in the heels, so the horse spun around and when she did, Ray took off after the dog down the street! It was the funniest thing! I wish we would've gotten it on video!

Day 52

Officially the first day of FINALLY having no trainer. For any of the horses.

I worked with Harry first. I worked on lunging him. He likes to run really fast and angled so he almost falls over, so that was a little bit scary. I didn't want him to get hurt. I have to work on that. I worked more with some Parelli stuff. He's still scared of the string on the end of the carrot stick so I want to get him acclimated to that before I start any other games. I want to have his complete trust, or at least most of his trust before I go and try to experiment with anything else.

I only have one goal with Harry, which seems to be his major problem:

I want him to calm down.

He is so uptight. He did rear a little bit when I first got on, but I walked him for about 30 minutes and he was relaxed by the end of it and he wasn't hot at all, which is the first I've ever seen him not all sweaty and gross after working.

While I was brushing down Harry, my brother worked with Nina. Her head was set beautifully. I wish I got pictures of that!
At the very end, I rode Brie outside. I didn't warm her up inside or anything. I lunged her outside and walked around the round pen that my brother was in, attempting to get her to that Quarter Horse walk. No luck.
I did ride her around the back pretty successfully though.

All in all, it was a wonderful day and I can't wait to work more next weekend. I'll leave you with this beautiful picture of Harry I took on Saturday.

Day 24

My mom's okay.
She's also better at getting Brie out of the stall than I am. I don't know how to fix this, but I'll find a way.

Brie was very calm today, it made me happy. I cantered her around for a little bit and then she got all worked up. Of course. I walked her around after that to calm her down, my mom did too.
We're getting better at the mounting block. She now knows that she should go to it to make us get off! Now just to get her used to standing there while we magically get taller to get on her.

We're working on bringing Nina's head down because right now it looks "like she's swimming" as my mom calls it. Her head is way high up in the air. Just the past two days we've been exaggerating how low we put our hands and it's bringing her head down to a more relaxed position. We still have much work to do though.

If I want to win first place with Brie, I can't just give her a break over the winter. I have to keep working on those tiny things that keep us from the elusive blue ribbon.