Cake is so yummy.

To all who journey to the ISC - BE NICE TO BRETT - he makes the best chocolate cake/brownies/everything ever. The whole entire kitchen staff are amazing.

But anyways! Today I got to, for the first time, start trimming Mo's feet! It was super neato and I learned a gazillion things! Mo was a bit of a stinker, but it was ok. She tolerated me and my learning just fine. She just isnt the biggest fan of the shoeing shed, but once that was sorted it was peachy.

I am hoping this weekend I will be able to get my act together enough to get Indy over to the centre in Mo's place. I need to get her a new health certificate in order to get on to the Parelli property, which is a bit of a pain, but I understand it. I have to call the vet tomorrow to get them to come out for her at N's place. Indy will have a really great time at the centre I think. It will be lots of deposits into my relationship account!

So anyways T, I agree with you that C is terrible at blogging - worse than me even! And with no excuse! I will try my best to keep this better updated. I am hoping to be able to have some more tellable things to ..tell... so therefore have things to blog.

As is, the most exciting thing to happen to me will happen tomorro wnad I cant even say what it is!
Oh, and the Moonlight Marathon has almost come to an end :-( And that tears me up inside becuase I hate that its cancelled!
On the plus side, I FINALLY found a case for my ipod that has a belt cliip, and *tada* ITS PURPLE! Its all neopreny and loverly.
Bed time calls,
I will try to blog more just for you T.
Dont forget to be awesome C.
<3
:-)
S

I love dinner

Seriously. Food is my favorite thing right now. Dinner completely made my day - THANK YOU to the kitchen staff at the ISC Florida! MMMMMMMM Mac and cheese with bow ties, and ICE CREAM PIE!!!! YUMMYYYYYYY!!! I ate sooo much and it was so yummy!

So anyways. food = yum. Kitchen staff = best ever. POTC 1 = total classic on my tv right now <3

Mo was a goober today. She kept trying to eat all the other ponies on our mini rides up the hill. Oh well. She is going a little stir crazy I think. Hopefully I can get her out and play some time this weekend. We are hoping to get a beach trip organized soon to. That would be uber super fun!

Today was a good day. Happy things and lots of warm sunshine.
In conclusion, I adore Pirates so manies, it is really borederline absurb. But I dont care. KRAKEN FOREVER!!! YEYYYY!!!

Bwahahhhaaa...

:-)
S

I am still alive!

I am still alive I promise!
I am now officially taking part in the Parelli Extern Program - and thats about all I can say right now!
Mo is doing great, and when I get some time to play with her, I will update about our sessions. Indy is good to :-) fat and happy doing nothing in a pasture.
So yes, happy, working hard, externing [if thats a word?] and learning a lot

:-)
S

Oh Boy.. I think

So I dont really know what happened today. I think Mo maybe woke up on the wrong side of the bed today because everything just seemed to go wrong. I just sort of took a step back and ended up letting her go after I unwound a little. I have to admit it was frustrating. I tried not to let it get that way, but I did get frustrated because things have been going SO WELL, that I just didnt know why today had to be different. In the end I picked my favorite song on my iPod [The Kracken, POTC 2] and just stood there and listened to the entire seven minutes of it while Mo licked and chewed and just chilled beside me and then I let her go and walked away. She followed me a little while but then walked back the other way back to the herd. At least she didnt gallop off right?

So instead of playing with Mo, who is probably tired anyways, I went to play with Indy. We played online a little, doing change of direction and maintain gait, but when I found my line crawling with fire ants I decided to tack up.... Indy has gained some weight... so girthing was a bit of an adventure. Indy was good though.

When I mounted, I had her in the confidence snaffle so we did fluid rein and I was pleasantly surprised to see that she remembered it from our ONE session before I left originally in September! So we did some of that at the walk and then at the trot and had some good stretching! After uber loads of suuper nice Indy flowy trot I went into a figure eight around trees trying to do carrot stick riding, but I dont know if Miss RBE is ready for that so I went back to concentrated rein and fluid rein.

We also worked on canter transitions.. because with Indy they are basically non-existant. Working on picking up the canter on the long part of the eight. It ws a bit tricksy at first because she did NOT want to canter but then we got it three good times in a row and I jumped off and called it quits! Poor Indy actually worked up a tiny bit of a sweat, so I untacked her and walked her out.

Pretty weird/interesting/good day. Hopefully Mo is in a better mood tomorrow.

Finesse Saturdays

We played with Finesse today! Sideways was my main goal because my sideways under saddle is iffy, so riding with a carrot stick or dressage whip [I switched back and forth] to help emphasize my point, me and Mo played with that.

Online and at liberty were also focused on sidways things, to help her understand the point of today. We went sideways all the way over a long log and around the entire round pen. I didnt do *to* much online/liberty stuff, just a warm up, because I knew I wanted to keep ahold of her energy and vigor that she had since she was tired anyways from yesterday already.

Im tired so I wont go into detail a lot, but we did a lot of nice concentrated rein Finesse in the Cradle with some relaly nice results and softness! Hovercraft in the works!

:-)
S

Good Fridays

Yesterday was a good day to. It rained and we played a little in the rain, but nothing serious. Just little liberty things.

Today was a really good day though. It was cloudyish this morning, but it cleared up really nice. It has been a long sleeve day, and I think Mo was glad for the reprieve from the clasting warm weather we have had. I have no complaints either way. If it is above zero, I am good with it!!

Mo was in a good mood. She walked up to me happily. And stuck with me for the whole walk to the trailer across the pasture. She ended up running away from me later though because I was talking to someone without keeping her entertained. It wasnt hard to go get her though. We played a little on the 45' and in the round pen at liberty, working on our liberty figure eights at a trot. Our draw is getting pretty good! I can get her to trot to me most times even!

I practiced a little bit of trying to mount from the neck but it didnt go so well so I am not sure how I am going to procede with that. Mo acts like I am to much weight for her to move around, which I very well may be. I really dont know. I am going to experiment some more with it another day.

I took Mo out on the 45 again, trying to break it in and we had some adrenaline which was fun to deal with. I like it when Mo has days like this because it is hard to motivate her when she is hot! I saddled her up and took out to play some more online, we worked on our changes of direction and maintaing gait.

I decided to ride in the Cradle bridle today to do some more exprimenting, and I think it went prett well. Me and Mo played around with changes within gait and our freestyle in my made up 'arena' around the logs. Mo is finally figuring out that she cant go faster under saddle. I am happy for that because her cute little hunter canter isnt good for everything! We did some trotting over the logs, the single ones and the medium pile. We *almost* went over the big pile, but then I had a threshold because I wasnt sure if she was going to do a deer jump and throw me off, so I dismounted. I attached my rein to her throatlatch and sent her over the big jump by herself. She did it three times and each time I was thinking to myself "Yea, I could ride that" so I remounted and came around at it again. This time WE JUMPED IT!!! YEY!!!

B told me later that it was three feet high! GO MO!!! That was REALLY cool! The jumping day session in ..Fluidity 1? really helped Mo figure out her jumping ability! We went around some more, not over the big one, but the other ones, cantering over them and helping Mo find her distance. That was really cool.

Mo had some more adrenaline after a rest break so we did some canter laps around the lower pasture. When we came back over to the round pen we experimented with the exercise Linda demo'ed in a recent Savvy Club dvd about moving the haunches in a disengage vs engagement exercises. Our disengage is pretty goo dso we tried working on the engagemnt exercise which involves bending the head in the direction of travel and moving just the hindquarters over. Mo was pretty confused about it, and I am sure it was because of me not knowing quite where to be, but we got a few steps in both directions eventually and I left it at that.

After walking around some more I brought Mo over to the trailer to untack. B had vaccated the round pen so I put Mo back on the 45 and went in the to practice our change of direction and change of gait in simulating liberty. That went really well so after a bit I ditched the halter and went to sit on the fence just to relax for a minute, but Mo offered her back so I mounted her backwards and used her bum as my pillow and afterwards practiced our backing by the tail while riding. That cracks me up. I love it.

Eventually I let us out of the round pen and we rode around bareback and bridless around the pasture at all gaits. THAT was really fun. Really confidence inspiring! After bombing around for a while we went to stand by the round pen and I took a mini nap lying on Mo's back. She was a doll and just stood there.

B and I did a little mini cool off 'trail' ride around the pasture to finish and then called it a day.

Four and a half hours later, that seems like a fair enough assessment! I LOVE having nothing better to do for a day than to play with my horses!!! Mo is doing great!

What Happens When You Think the Trailer is Locked...

As per my newly assumed routine, when B leaves to her feeding job, I go over to feed Indy and Crystal and then over to the other J's to play with Mo, and then B comes to play with Chance to. Well! Yesterday I was clever, and asked B for her trailer keys. She normally keeps it locked because we have all of our things inside the tackroom. Today I wasnt so clever. I later found out it wasnt locked for this express reason, but for the time being, keep in mind I thought it was.

As far as tools go that left me with my shiny [ugh] new 45' and the savvy string on my belt. Oh Boy! Looks like I really get to practice that liberty I have been procrastinating on! I called Mo. She looked up from her hiding spot in the woods but didnt come over until I got closer. But she did come somewhat in the end so that was good! We played hard yesterday and it was very warm so I am glad she doesnt hate me for that. It was a little cooler today and overcast so that was nice for her. We even got showered on two or three times, so a nice little cool down mid play was good.

When I met up with Mo, Chance and Reggie [J's horse] came to say hi to because I was carrying a plastic bag with my water and a snack in it, as well as Mo's carrot chunks. I was thoroughly investigated before shooing the other two away and protecting my herd of two. I put a coul of my 45 around Mo's neck and we set off over to the trailer. Half way to my end point I did a big interal DOH and groaned aloud Im sure, becuase I realized I had no keys and therefore no halter, no carrot stick no saddle. GUH. Round pen and liberty it is!

We went over to the round pen and played a bit. Our departs we crappy in the bigging until I figured out that swinging a small portion of the rope to make a whirring noise works better than throwing the whole coil at her hind end. THEN we got some go. But not a lot. Mo goes on a rollercoaster of adrenaline. up and down in the span of a minute. One second shes all "WHOOOHOO YEEHAWWW" and the next shes plodding around like shes eighty. Which is fine. Its just an observation.

I have been playing with transitions to backup on the rail in the circling game so we played some more with that and got our stick to me yo-yos going pretty good! Some real hind quarter power going on there! That big draft butt is actually getting some use! In my grand lack of imagination I got bored and just jumped on bareback and bridless because with Mo I just can... in a round pen her go level is uber low anyways so mostly we just stood around. Eventually I jumped off again and we played a little more with stick to me.

B came around then and showed me my brilliance in that the tack door WAS OPEN. *headdesk* Oh well. I ran with the theme and only extracted a carrot stick from the formerly-locked-but-not-any-more room. Mo perked up then. TOOLS are important. It was so much easier to be CLEAR and precise with what I was trying to get across with the carrot stick. We played in the round pen with B and Chance there to and THAT was an adventure!

Each horse had to figure out who was directing who and not react when, say B was slapping the ground at Chance, Mo had to know to still stay with me. I kept jumping on and off Mo because I am not creative enough to keep coming up with things, but on one of those time I DID kneel on her back, and stand almost all the way up! I could have stood all the way, but I dont trust MY coordination. Yet anyways. I am working on it.

We played around doing little things and I found out that my sideways circle game that I invented [?] works REALLY well at liberty! I just put my hand in the same place and off she goes into a sideways circle! I knew I was being super precise about the change in REGULAR circle hand to SIDEWAYS circle hand for a reason! I felt slightly clever at that.

I hadnt planned on riding really. Mo worked hard yesterday, and I was happy just plodding around bareback, but when I finally [and I mean like hours later] got Mo on the 45' with a halter and we were playing around in the yard with the logs an drunning and jumping and doing changes of direction at 40', my addiction kicked in and I just couldnt resist. I LOVE playing on the ground, but I am ADDICTED to riding. It fuels my passion. Ground play is fun, and very cool, it is something I always want to get better at, but riding is what I want to excel at. I ADORE being on my horses. Sometimes that bites me in the ass and I mount to soon.. but live and learn right?

So anyways after that strong run around warm up [adrenaline boost inserted here] I saddled Mo and did our preflight stuff. She was happy and so I bridled her [which she is getting SO GOOD AT! I am super proud of that, no more head throwing or anything, bridling OR unbridling!] with the Cradle for kicks and off we went. We played around circling the round pen from the outside since B and Chance we in there, and that went good, just freestyle. Then I made myself pick up the reins, since thats another thing I procrastinate - FINESSE! I am just fine riding around freestyle, I like it, my horse likes it, and we have a good time. I found out in my six weeks that Mo is ready for Finesse, so I know all thats holding us up is me. I have a hard time picking up those reins. Donno why, I just have a brace about it. I am working on that to...

Reins in hand we went around walk and trot and over to the logs, where Mo 'saw' something and got all snorty [for her.. she doesnt really 'do' snorty!] uppity, lets call it uppity. Her usually level head comes up and her ears prick and she looks at whatever and she trots faster. We did figure eights around the two logs until she calmed down and thought about the pattern. Yey Patterns! Ill have to get pictures of J's Playground. Its really cute !

When my dearheart calmed down we trotted over the two logs, jumping them and that was COOL! We started with one and then the other and then jumped both as a double jump! YEY MO! I will make a hunter of you yet! Then we went down the scarier end of the feild and did patterns ddown there and jumped the other single log and then the medium size pile of three logs! YEY! I am so proud of Mo! The only set she hasnt done [undersaddle] is the big pile of logs that is just *this* side of my comfort zone with Mo because she is such a sporadic jumper. Maybe tomorrow :-) I also dont want her to get sick of jumping, so we only did it two or three times.

After jumping we went back over to the round pen to work on should swinging and then went on tour around the pasture fenceline over to the water trough to get a drink. Yesterday in the confidence snaffle Mo couldnt get enough suction to get a drink so I had taken off her bridle for her to drink. It was quite the to-do to get the thing back on without dismounting [lazy me] so when Mo turned her head to ask me to take off her bridle again I politely declined and listend for lacking suction noises, there were none, she was just trying a new trick HA! Smart pony!

Finishing our tour of the fenceline I headed us back to the trailer to unsaddle. We went into the round pen again and played some more at liberty. We played with our figure eights at liberty, which, after some support from B to reinforce stick to me, went really well at a walk! AND then I had a Mo glued to my shoulder thereafter. It was great! Mo was even sad to see me go! Looking all forlorn at the gate and whatnot! SO CUTE!

We were supposed to bring Indy and Crystal over to the other J's [home] again tonight like last night but we were all to tired so we just skipped and planned for tomorrow. Indy was happy for dinner today, and is happy and healthy except her left lower eyelid is swollen a little. B is going to red light it for me tomorrow. Hopefully that will help.

Other than getting some groceries [by me-style groceries I mean milk, OJ and some tasty brownies that caught my fancy] thats about all I did today. About 4 hours with Mo, home for lunch, groceries, then tired relaxing on the couch and computer! I am liking this 'holiday' concept!

:-)
S