Day 227

Today was very much the same as yesterday. I worked Brie first. She was limping a little today, so we took a long time warming up. Outside was a little more crazy than yesterday, but she did walk calmly out the door, so that's a plus. We didn't go up and down the hill today, just focused on calming down and then making it back to the barn.

After Brie, I rode Harry. He is terrible at leg yields and I really need to work on that. I say this because he has this nasty habit of riding at an angle of the wall, so that his butt is swung out a little into the arena. When I try to put leg pressure on him, he just speeds up. He was okay today, a little pushy about what he wanted to do, but overall it was okay. I rode him outside and he had a bit of a meltdown because my mom and brother kept leaving me and he would get upset, so I ended up dismounting a ways away from the barn and walking back because he was not having any walking whatsoever once they left and I didn't want him to rear on me. He hasn't been that far out by himself, even though it's not very far, but he was still upset over it.

My mom had a hard time with Brie. She tried to ride her outside and Brie was just not having it. Hopefully the more I work with her outside, the more confident she gets and as she gets better, the less of a bad expectation my mom will have about riding her, that way everyone is happy.

Day 224

Every time I get disheartened with Harry, I have to remember how far I've come.

So you may remember that he is in a bit of a slump performance-wise lately. He's just not very enthusiastic about gaiting and not doing nearly as well as he was in April or so and I can't figure out why. He just got his shoes done last weekend, so I figured that this weekend there might be a little bit of a change. He's just not having it. He's very stretched out and not collected and despite the huge amount of circlework that we're doing, it just doesn't seem to be helping. He isn't tap-dancing anymore, so that's a plus, but his corto has definitely extended and his largo is more pace than gait. If we make it to the next show, that means I only have five more practice days with him, and I'm not so sure that I can accomplish this big of a goal in only five days, especially when I don't even know where to start tackling the problem.

But I do have to admit, I'm proud of how relaxed he's gotten, even if it seems to be making him a little bit lazy. His whole problem with the tap dancing was because of all this pent up energy and anxiety that he had and now that he's let that go, it's like he has no real steam to fuel his engine, the little train that he is (or was). But today before I rode, I did some more Parelli Games. He let me swish the rope all around him today without continuing to turn so that he was still facing me. He let me twirl the rope like a helicopter and he wasn't even phased by it. He even let me swing the rope over him in an arc from one side to the other without getting scared of seeing it or hearing the hum that it was making through the air! I played the Porcupine Game with him a bit today and he was really good at it. I didn't have to put pressure on either his shoulders or his hinds for very long before he got the idea to pivot away from it. So yeah, our performance might be suffering a little bit, but I would rather be gaining his trust and having him calm down so that he's a sociable animal than being a great performance and absolutely skittish of everything. Now I just need to find a way to combine the two.

After our somewhat depressing ride (only because he was pokey), we went outside with Samantha and Tobacco. I'm so proud of my little Harry! He has been scared of the pond in back for the longest time, and two weeks ago we went out and I lead him around it on foot and we got really close to the water's edge. Well today when we were riding outside, we were able to calmly walk next to it without the fear of being eaten up by the sea demons! In fact, the entire ride outside was wonderful. He's turning into being a great trail horse, but I do still have hope for finding a happy medium between super anxious but good performance and really calm but very pokey. Tomorrow, we're trying the fruit basket.

Day 106

Oh Brie. Now that we've started canter training, that's all she wants to do! Not okay, especially when no one else wants to canter her during their ride. We have to work on listening skills. We tried to work a corto inside and then went outside to jump ditches and canter. What a silly mare.

I rode Harry today too. I actually started on him. Our lunging was nice, a couple of fishtails, but we did very well. He's listening very nicely. His gaiting today was rather odd though. All of his hooves weren't in sync at all, even when I hopped off and let my mom try to fix that. I guess everyone has those days though, don't they.

I'm so excited for Thanksgiving break! My irregular weekends have finally ended! I can't wait to start going on Saturdays and Sundays from now on. I didn't go yesterday because I went to the NU VS U of I game at Wrigley, which we lost horribly. It was so depressing, I can't even begin to tell you. Oh well, all I can look forward to is this upcoming weekend of normalcy!