The Last Few Days

This is just a quick re-cap since I have to actually get some work done...

Friday was a good-ish day. On the ground. When I went to catch Mo, she was walking to the gate already, which was cool. She walked right up to me...and then kept walking. I walked with her a bit trying to mirror her enough to get her to stop but she took off at a canter and four strides away she methodically bucked in my direction. Nice.

So she cantered away, and I walked after her, playing the catchiing game by staying behind and to the side so she would have to turn to see me. It was pretty funny the way we squiggled across the feild. She didnt go far, just to where another horse and a pony were. She started harassing the horse, and sent her my way enough that I had to protect my space and ended up sending the horse back to her. Mo looked like she was having a ball.

I just stopped and looked at King and made as if to go over and pet him. Mo looked at me like " Oh no, wait, just kidding!" and walked over to me. Haltered like nothing was wrong and off we went. She was super energetic though so I played with her. We played super fast falling leaf and then stick to me - and a first EVER stick to me CANTER. How neat! So Mo and I bolted all across the pasture for a while before finally making it to the gate.

We played on the ground in the ring on a 22' and she was a complete angel. Amazing. I was so excited to see how this would translate to our ride - hoping to get a 'gold' ride compared to the sad stuff we have been slumped in lately. I was to be mistaken. Mo was just crazy.. for Mo, as crazy as she gets anyways. She was SO forwards, so fast, so go-y I couldnt do the carrot stick riding I had planned on practicing at all because every three steps I was bending her to a stop.

Recently Pat talked about a horse earning their reins, so I thought of that and decided to ditch the stick and work towards Mo earning her freestyle rein today. [Side laugh: read a book this weekend that pegged horse reins as reigns.. made me laugh that that got past an editor] So I picked up a not quite concentrated rein and focused on transitions, changes of direction and figure eights. That sort of worked. Enough that I could giver her a full rein. Then I got off.

Mo was all worked up though [seriously, winter coat already] so we walked down the laneway and road and back before letting her graze.

Saturday:

I went to Russell to pick up my now safetied trailer. The farrier was coming on Sunday and Dakota needed to get to Aunty's house to get his feet done. Since he had never seen the trailer before I had no idea how long it was giong to take. I let him out into the back yard to graze while I unloaded the trailer from my garage-y spoils! I got a GIANT Backhoe tire to be filled with sand and covered with plywood to make a pedestal, and six more normal tires, with two large truck tires for bonus. Whoo!

I lost control of the backhoe tire rolling it down the ramp so it rolled a bit and Dakota promplty went "OMG WTF!" And cantered a handy lap of the yard. Bless thy LBI nature because as soon as it stopped moving, so did he and he went back to grazing.

Overall, it took me about forty minutes to load him into a trailer he had never seen before with a ramp. Pretty good for Kota considering he never once freaked out, or did his rear pull back trick. Whoo! I was impressed when he volunteered to put feet on the ramp as I squeezed him between me and the trailer, so that was a plus.

He unloaded great, didnt try to bolt past the butt bar, which I am thrilled about because I wasnt sure he wouldnt try.

I put him out with Mo and Indy and all was well. Success!!

Sunday:

Sunday was farrier day, and that went well as always. Mo even took a nap flat out after she was done. Its become her trademark, the goober.

I left Kota and Mo inside while I played with Indy afterwards because it was kind of a dmmap scummy day. Indy seemed like she was in a good mood while I clipped the 22' on and brought her into the ring. However. *sigh* However, as soon as I asked her to move to inches out of my way she took off at a high headed canter. I tried to wiggle the rope to slow her down, so she changed directions. Ok.... ? When I finally got her stopped I yo-yoed her back and forth until she seemed calm again and then decided we needed serious help with transitions online.

I sent her back out as soft as I could and still got a canter. I will work on that. We proceded to play with w/t/c transitions online until she could do them all fairly reliably AND calmly. When we changed direction to go the other way and practice that way it sort of blew up minorly again and then settled down again.

I forgot to mention that I put the confidence style snaffle on her so that when I ride I will hopefully be able to use the fluid rein technique to help her bring her head down and stretch. So when I tacked her up I wound the reins around her neck and put the hackamore over the bridle. A few more girth tightening things and she seemed calm enough to ride so I mounted.

After a few walking laps doing fluid rein we moved up to her usual ground-eating-ongoing-forever trot. To me it felt like forever before she got that I was asking her to stretch. I am sure it wasnt, but it felt like it, I dont know why. She she did, she didnt stretch her nose to the ground, but she just lowered her head level to her withers, from its usual uppity place when she trots. So that was nice.

We trotted forever and a day playing with that, randomly doing changes of direction across the ring and such. My focus was the stretch, nothing more. She seemed content to trot, so we did.

When I felt that lesson had been done enough we walked out on the trails. Our gate opening skills are getting pretty good to :-) Our walk was uneventful, which was nice, and I let her graze in the yard while I put Dakota back in the feild and then put her out and fetched Mo.

I actually tacked up Mo and set out on foot onthe trails. I wanted to deliberatly do something different to hopefully get off of our bad streak. I found out on Friday via back by the tail that Mo was in heat, so that may be a reason for our butting heads. Not and excuse, but an inkling to why. As we went down the trails I alternated between falling leaf and stick to me until Mo was with me and calm and happy before mounting. This was about halway through the trail.

After mounting we trotted the trails a few times, cantered even, on a casual rein and it was great. I got my good ride. Mostly. On our walk out, walking back to the barn something scared the bejesus out of Mo, and for the first time in her riding career, she bolted. Oh boy....? I remember it like it was in slow motion. I was caught a little off balance, but managed to keep my stirrups AND my seat, for which I was proud. I also remembered to do a one rein stop. I am proud of that to. I was just in a halter and 12' line for reins, if I pulled on two reins, she would have just been able to brace and run to bloody Alaska. So, a one rein stop saved the day. We hadnt run to far so I we walked back to see what was wrong.

Mo was a little jittery so I pushed her sideways on the way to her spooky spot until we got to two trees she was convinced she wouldnt fit between going sideways. When we went through them she sort of jumped through so we played squeeze game with the trees until she was ok. I never found out what scared my unscareable horse.

We both lived through our escapade and made it back to the barn where I untacked her and took her for a walk up the laneway to cool, then let her graze in the yard while I cleaned and filled the water trough.

Interesting few days for sure....
:-)
S