Day 273

Sunday

Didn't make it out yesterday because we were taking down the Christmas decorations!

Brie has this weird sticky spot on her flank and she doesn't want anyone to touch it. She nearly kicked my mom and I while we were trying to clean it, so I fed her carrots while my mom cleaned it off and put some medicine on it. I hope it's nothing! It was kind of hot when I touched it, but I hope it's not anything serious.

She was very full of energy when I when to longe her. She was bucking and galloping so fast, I had to reel her in and put her on the long line. After much running around, she finally calmed down. She is getting better at standing for the mounting block! Each day I work with her to stand still for me, she gets better at it, so I am very pleased with that. After all of that running, she was very calm and easy to work with today. She never tried to pull me and was willing to work with me. We worked on slowing down her corto and on not spinning her reverses and things went great!

Then I got on Harry. It is going to take some getting used to him again. I barely rode him for 30 minutes but I was frustrated. I just have to remember to be patient and not expect him to be amazing, especially after his time off. After failed attempts at a corto, I settled for just walking him without him pulling away from me. After that I was done. As long as I remember to be patient, I know we will make amazing progress. I just have to work for it!

Day 164

Harry pulled some fishtailing on me today while lunging. I hope it doesn't turn into his bad habit again, I was happy to finally be over that with him.

Also, I learned that lunging is spelled longeing. Show how good of a speller I am!

But aside from the fishtailing, he was pretty good. I'd like to work more with him outside once Nationals are over because even though it's kind of cute that he's so attached to Nina, it's really not good when he starts freaking out and trying to yank me in her direction, even when we're in the indoor arena.

We had a good ride, his gait was as good as last weekend. A little more work on the largo tomorrow and we'll be set for the State Fair next weekend! All I can complain about was that at the end when we came in from walking around outside, he started to get antsy when I wanted him to reverse to the left and started pulling me around to the right because Nina had already gone into the wash rack outside the arena and he wanted to follow her. I managed to just get him calm enough to go into a left flex and decided to end it at that. Always end on a good note, even if it's not what you expected. =]