Day 152

Brie's cut is looking better. She does not like being out by herself though! When I rode by her near the end of my ride, she whinnied (which she rarely does), ran toward the gate and watched me with Harry. Then she proceeded to do figure 8s around the paddock until my brother came and got her while I was still working. How silly!

My mom rode Harry first today and we still had the problem of pacing. Luckily, I don't think there's a soundboard at Michigan, so as long as we can kind of check him out of pacing and back into gaiting whenever he does, we might still do well. It's far too late to try to minute-fix this, so we'll just have to keep working on it until the next show. Harry had a longgg workout today. After my mom was finished riding him indoors, she went into the outdoor arena to work him then had me get on. I worked on walking around the arena and then tried to start gaiting and largo-ing, but he was not having anything to do with largo-ing correctly, so I ended up doing a lot of circle work, which turned out well, then tried to get him on the rail, which didn't work out so well.

Rather than fight with him the rest of the ride, I moved to the round pen. Good old round pen. I worked on keeping his headset and getting out of pacing in there. We also did a little bit of a canter -- I figured that if he could keep a rhythm at a canter then it might improve keeping his rhythm at a largo. It ended up working, either because I was right or because he was tired. We finished with a short walk around the back pasture and a nice bath.

Then we shaved their ears. Or tried to.
Nina snapped out of her halter. AGAIN. This is the second leather halter she's broken! She gets so freaked out whenever anyone goes by her ears, especially with the clippers. It took a good 15 minutes to do her ears and now we have to find someone to fix the halter or buy a new one. Hopefully it can be fixed, those leather things are expensive!

Harry was such a good boy. He was kind of hesitant, but he was done in a snap. Brie was just thankful she didn't have to participate in the nonsense.

Here's to hoping we have a good show this weekend!!