Barn Pixie

Three horses today. I will improve fast  faster more better a good deal if I can keep this up.

Penny pulls like a freight train, enough that I want to bit her up so she can't just rest her freaking humongous head on the resins and make me carry it. I try to yield when she does, and she just drops her nose deeper into the ground and pulls harder. Suggestions welcome.

How to use the correct part of your leg? forget to remove spurs before riding the baby horse who doesn't need them. We only had one or two flying moments...

Kaboose is doing well. I really wish Janice could come see us, but she's busy with her broken sister and dad and pup, and keeping the rest of her life together. Maybe after the Oct.show I can get Kaboose down there for a lesson. Another borrow of everything - horse, tack, truck, trailer. I work for the nicest people, that they let me do these things.

multi-horse day - yay!!

Took Rachel to the Canadians, she tried riding Kaboose for a lesson. Bob had a lesson on Penny, and we realized that he Never Let Go with his legs. So he spent a very interesting hour practicing taking his leg OFF the horse, so she could feel it again when he put it on very quietly, and he was illuminated and very pleased with himself and the horse. Rachel spent an interesting half hour trying to balance between soothing Keboose and actually asking her to do something. She found a nice balance, and they got some very peaceful walk-trot-walk transitions, followed by some organization to produce a walk-canter transition. I could see Rachel reaching for the correct form, it was verra interesting.

then Rachel got Ruby, and I hopped on Kaboose and we went into the woods while the brilliant sun was still out. The big girls got their shoes pulled, so they were footy over the rocks, and Ruby is always footy over the rocks because we haven't gotten her a pair of sneakers yet. So we mostly walked. But it was gorgeous.

And when we got home, Rachel tried to put some of what she'd gotten from Kaboose to work on Ruby which was more or less successful. Rachel was getting a feel for what kind of trot she could get a canter from, not too slow, not too fast and rushy, paying attention.

And then we went to see Bully, who looks soooo slender and elegant and sleek after the Canadians.

He was good too. A little full of himself having had a day off, but I got some very nice canters, and some better transitions. I am still working on  the same things Rachel is, which she found illuminating, and (I think) funny. So she could tell me to keep my shoulders BACK when I asked for the canter, just the way I was telling her earlier.

the rest of the afternoon devolved into someone else's kid's birthday, which was fine, but I am so toasted I need to sleep.

Finally reached the owner of Molly, now trying to arrange a visit so I can ride her, pat her, stare into her eyes and see if she might work

I've had a series of  fabulous rides on Kaboose, particularly today, and think I should just accept Bob and Leonor's offer to take her for year

I rode an AMAZING and extreeemely ancient TB on Tuesday (he's 23, I love him), schooled to 2nd, and totally capable of 1st.  I could probably read the test to him and he'd do it from understanding the words rather than any aids I was applying. I felt like such a GOOD RIDER - like all the thrashing I do is paying off somehow. His situation is complex but workable.

Lest anyone think I have no discrimination, I have:

• ridden a narrow Welsh/QH cross, just under 14.2, that is kind and forward, but not quite right
• realized that although the NY city block horse, Goose, is up for lease, his trot gives me cramps, and I feel like a spaz when I ride him
• passed up a barn full of hunters because the woman in charge didn't know what a dressage test was (?!?)
• looked at but passed on two horses that were offered, because they are  young and unschooled - I am looking for educating me this year, not educating another young horse

I have a dressage show this Sunday at Xenophon. I'll be riding Penny in T2 and T3, and Kaboose in T3, and taking Penny over the 2' fences.

I would like not to be a complete catastrophe over fences.

Apparently the jumping nerves have completely over-run the test nerves, 'cause I can't find them (the test nerves) anywhere. woot?

trail ride before everything got quite so awfully hot and then thundered and lightninged and poured - rode Penny, Bob on Kaboose, Rachel-Roo on Ruby-Roo (they are SO CUTE together it is kind of stunning)

(she is my other daughter - I recognize so many more of her impulses than Aerin's... )


So I have been treating the whole horse thing as more like window shopping, and I want one of each please:

DreamHorse.com Horse ID: 1422649 - Molly
Holsteiner/ Appendix cross for sale or lease | Buy this Horse at Equine.com
Personable and Fun PC and H/J Mare for Sale | Buy this Horse at Equine.com
Gorgeous Dapple Grey Welsh TB X 3' Eventing Lg. Pony | Buy this Horse at Equine.com
2nd Level Gelding - MUST SELL | Buy this Horse at Equine.com
talented dapple gray | Buy this Horse at Equine.com

in rough order of geographical proximity

yeah, there are too many grays in there.

I fell hard for a pair of Welsh Sect D (Big, cob sized) mares imported from Wales, but they were more broodmare candidates than dressage schoolmaster candidates

Rode the Rubster today. We tried to go out but it was too hot and too buggy to be much fun, plus insanely muddy and generally blicky. That is a technical term, meaning nasty.

So I need to label the bridles and girths. Mostly the girths. We have three horses, three saddles in current use, and each saddle has two or three girths for use with different horses. I was thinking of dog tags until I priced them. I was assuming 3 or 4 or 5$, instead they are each $8 and that adds up fast. Then I looked at engraving my own, but they are ugly and too big. BUT - I have a punch that can put holes in pennies. So I think I am going to punch a handful of (Canadian!!) pennies for Penny, and drill holes in a handful of red rhinestones for Ruby, but I am stymied for Kaboose.

We have no small coin with a train on it, much less a caboose. I don't want to try to find jewelry train parts because, well, expense again. Plus they are not smooth and relatively discreet. I kind of like the special nickels with a buffalo on the flip side from Jefferson. Al suggested a different Canadian coin. Although the dime is a particular favorite of mine (Schooner Bluenose! under full sail!) it doesn't actually relate to the horse. There are US State quarters with horses, or that are pretty in other ways, but they are a little bigger than I was hoping for. plus, no caboose.

Any suggestions? Will you send me coins from away?

exercise: ran 5 5min sets at 5 miles an hour, plus put the treadmill up to 1 for an incline, thought i was gonna die
horses: penny and ruby about 35 mins each
fabric: YAY!! finally what I was envisioning, all those days and strips of red and black ago

I worry that if I take some time off from miss a ride with the girls that Leonor will hire another, more official rider to take over. That happened last summer, legitimately because I was gone for a chunk of the summer, but then we got kind of cross threaded in the fall. But I think I will be riding more this summer.

Today we are forcibly reminded:

Other people's horses are Other People's Horses. They are not my horses.

And that is the end of this lesson.

well crap. The red mare is lame, and I don't know why. I am torn between thinking is probably happened in the last day or two, and wondering of the tripping she has been doing has anything to do with it. She was walking pretty solidly, but once we picked up a trot she was nodding her head every time her right front foot was bearing weight. There was no visible swelling or heat, but she is so fuzzy in the legs it is difficult to tell with cold hands. I'll check in on her tomorrow. I told the owners. I told the barn manager. I don't know what else to do.

I did get another barn looked after - eight horses, seven stalls, untold water buckets... It is about three hours of steady effort to accomplish it all. Electric water buckets man, I am grateful for them every single day I find them steaming gently instead of having to kick the ice out.

I am beat. And I still have to make my fabric things and stay awake during Aerin's winter concert. She is at school all afternoon helping the sound guy. My girl, techie in training. The people teaching her about the sound board were enchanted that she is a second generation techie. I am amused that they even thought of it that way. I think, counting my dad, she may be third generation. If we want to get technical.

I've been humming that line in my head for two days and only now realized it isn't right. The Who - Magic Bus; "hope I die before I get old" but really I don't, I'd prefer to live to be very old and active and then die fast and relatively painless. I do however hope the rings dries out before it gets cold or there will be ice bumps in it and I won't be able to ride til it thaws again.

I got completely sidetracked onto clicker training research because I want to make teach little Ruby some tricks. So I have ordered some books from Karen Pryor (whose book Lads Before the Wind I read looong long ago when it first came out and also read her father's book written when he was visiting her: Philip Wylie's The Spy Who Spoke Porpoise) that were written by Alexandra Kurland. I mentioned it to Leonor and she left me a copy of the book and a clicker to play with today, until my stuff comes in.

So I rode Kaboose and she seemed tight and cold for most of it. We did best when I stopped trying to practice sitting the trot and focused on getting her forward but not fast. I have decided to adopt Hannah's criteria for any particular ride; is the horse better at the end than she was at the beginning? If yes, then it has to be a net win. So we trotted a lot, and worked on longer and stretchier and bendier while trotting.

I rode Ruby for about 15 minutes bareback, trying to just whisper the things I wanted to do. I was struck by something Casa Corona said about her young horse, that was echoed in the comments. She said if she tried to Ride him for a circle or a serpentine, he couldn't seem to hear it, but if she just thought about it, and laid out the track in her mind very clearly, it worked very well. She says he is sensitive, and he over reacts to light aids. Two commenters agreed that their young horses had had similar issues, although one noted that as her horse aged he got more used to the aids and understood better the degrees of delicacy for more advanced school figures. It seems counterintuitive to use less aids for a young horse. It seems like they'd need big simple (and maybe loud) aids to begin with and then they should get refined. But I tried using much quieter aids with Ruby instead of noisier ones, and it seems to be helping a good deal. So I'll go with what works, and philosophize at leisure.

I concluded with 5 minutes of clicker training for everyone. Kaboose seemed to get it instantly, although she may have been just curious about the vetwrapped soda bottle on a stick. Penny dimly remembered something like this in her past, back when she was little (she reminds me of a 14 or 15 year old kid - very much working on adulthood). Ruby wanted to do her best trick ("Bow") and get more carrot parts for it. The soda bottle was just between her and the carrot giver.

this should be fun