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!
