Guess What!

Soooooo,..... Today! I rode a racehorse! I thought that was pretty cool! We only trotted, but it was full out in a racing saddle and everything! I found that pretty exciting anyways. One of the regular riders had a doctors appointment for the last set today, so I got to fill in.

In other news, have you hugged your horse today?
I have! I was away all weekend since Friday and missed my ponies terribly [and yes, I called to check up on them on Saturday night.. because I may just be that lame] Hugging them is just the best cure for missing my furry amis. When I got to Aunty's everyone was in the farthest far corner away from the barn and I was so pooped from the weekend and from work that I couldnt garner the energy to go *all* the way out there. Lazy right? Well.. its a big field, and I worked hard today. After hanging out with my cousins and aunty for a while I looked out the window to be delighted by the sight of my loverly ponies.

I promptly ran out to the barn calling out to all ponies belonging to me and lo and behold Mo was happily marching to the gate to say hi and Indy was hot on her heels. I had just enough time to give Mo some tasty treats before Indy came up behind her with nasty looks. Indy got her yummy things as well, plus her hugs. Then I ran out to give Mo hugs to.

Lots of hugs later, I do the typical me thing. I brought Mo into the barn to love on her some more and see if  I could come up with a way to turn her wonderful bowing into lying down. All at liberty :-)

I havent quite figured out the laying down part yet, but our bowing progressed to being easily accomplished on both sides by just tapping her leg a little bit so that was awesome! During that session I was really thinking about Linda's article about motivating a left brain introvert with food, because Mo was REALLY motivated! She kept offering me things in order to win a treat instead of just mobbing me for food, so that was interesting!

After playing with that for a while I grabbed the bridle and played with getting her to put her own head in the bridle by motivating with more cookies around the bit. That was fairly successful! One of the most simple, but amazing things I saw during my course time in Florida was Avery bridling Akiss, she held out the bridle in front of him and her just basically put his own bridle on. He went and got the bit, put it in his mouth and put his head in the proper position to have the headstall slipped over his ears. Simple, but fabulous. I would like to work towards that!

When everything was all set I hopped up bareback and Mo and I set off for a little trail ride. We played with some contact things, sideways and transitions within the trot on the trails. I got SO close to passage!!! Mo gave me this fabulous floating slow collected trot. It felt so amazing! I think we have been spending to much time in the ring and need to get out more! Oops, my bad! Of course, its pouring rain now and I have no clue if the trails will be useable any more! Mo and I had a lovely dash through the rain back to the barn.

Overall, great day I would say!

:-)
S