anyone learn anything? maybe?

Saturday I got Colonel out and lunged him. Alyssa was working with Luca and trot poles that later became canter poles. I lunged colonel over those. He got a little hyped up at times, especially the canter poles, but he stayed manageable and I put him back. The thought was that this would bring his mind back into the work zone without me having to get on him while he's all fresh and whatnot.
I got Star out for a brief go. We started out in the arena but Jade was going to be pulling the tire in there and I decided I'd pass on that little experience. We worked in the outdoor arena at Alyssa's suggestion. Star was not going as straight as I wanted so I did some little circles in the same and in the opposite direction we were going. Not sure how much that helped.
Alyssa was curious about "something" and wanted to hop on her. I was interested to hear what Alyssa had to say, but also quite pleased that she was going to finally get on her. Alyssa has been avoiding this. I've only been prodding gently but Alyssa insists that she doesn't like riding Star, and these days she can afford to be picky. :/
It was also gratifying to note that the tiny tiny posting that Alyssa usually does was absent on Star. Confirming what I occasionally try to tell myself, namely, Star moves differently than Keno and Luca and the posting wont necessarily be the same height. Not that it wasn't subtle, just more detectable to the human eye. I was also happy to see that Alyssa revised her opinion of Star at least slightly.

The advice I got was this: long thighs + insufficiently large saddle = seat pushed towards the cantle + leaning forward to compensate for seat= unhappy, high headed horse.

So I'm looking into buying a bigger saddle, but, that all being said, I've been riding Star in this saddle for a long time. I know she can do better with it than she was doing on Saturday. So there's still a discipline component I can work on in the mean time.

Today I technically worked 4.2 horses. The decimal is the small amount of time I spent long lining Spirit. I only got roped into that because I found Niki cast in her stall. She was lying with her hooves facing the wall. There were lots of scratch marks on the wall, which she added to when she saw me peering in and tried to get up. She made an even more vigorous attempt when I opened the door. She settled down in between attempts but she was still panting and you could see the whites of her eyes a little.

Robert was in a lesson with Spirit so I got stuck with Spirit while Robert and Chris went off to free Niki. Spirit was good, especially considering it was his first time long lining. Niki finally managed to push herself away from the wall when she saw that Robert was planning on intervening. I guess I'm just not scary enough to get the job done.

I worked with Star on staying straight in her corners. I worked with me on just experimenting with my position in the saddle. I spent some time neck reining Star and gripping the pommel with my other hand to hold myself in the middle of the saddle. Seeing what it takes to hold the same position without the pommel. I was much more able to get my back straight/ shoulders back when I was right in the middle. This lends even more evidence to support Alyssa's theory that I'm leaning forward to compensate for my seat being too far back. I also fidgeted with my feet a little but I didn't have a whole lot of luck there. Plus Star eventually reached a point where she wasn't interested in putting up with my antics.

On the Star front I think we made some progress. When she cut her corners and counterbent through her corners I spun her pretty hard in the direction opposite the one we were going. When she started anticipating the spin to the outside I just applied my inside bending aids and she was relieved not to have to do the spin and she went nice and straight. We'll have to practice this more at the trot. She'll be a little ball of unholy fury if/when I try to do this at a canter.

We did a little canter around the arena at the end, just for my entertainment. I'm paying for my tendency to let Star walk or stop after we canter. Now she doesn't like the idea of going down to a trot, more importantly, an energetic trot. She feels entitled to a very lazy walk. I think that should be easy to fix though. Maybe not fast, but easy. I'll just make her do it until she gets used to it.

I got Colonel out and we did lots and lots of transitions. Basically I decided we'd do under saddle what I had started on the long lines. His walk to trot transitions got a lot better. When I did my little half halts he picked his head up, rocked a perceptible amount of weight back to his hind end and then went off my leg pretty nicely. His trot to walk and his walk to halt are still basically shit.

He wants to lean on my hands. For the halt my solution to this was to ask for my halt right before a wall. That got some semi-reasonable stops out of him. When they weren't reasonable I made him do a turn on the forehand to get us pointed the right way. When they were good enough he got to just walk forward and turn like a normal horsey. Don't know if that message got to his little walnut-sized brain or not.

For the trot to walk, my idea was that a good transition got some rest at the walk, a crappy one got sent back into a trot. He started getting kindof balky about the trot-walk transition because he wasn't doing it well enough often enough to avoid having to do another up transition after two strides or so. Still pondering options for that one.

I got a good halt out of him without using the rail so I hopped off him and I hope maybe some twinkle of that lesson reached his walnut brain. Hard to tell.

I got Lady out and walked her around some, trotted her around some, mostly walked her around some. Robert has been expressing some interest in riding her again, and he shouldn't have to waste time re-conditioning her so I think I'll try to pitch in with Alyssa to get her going. Plus, Papillon was looking pretty lame. Lady was definitely trotting asymmetrically, but she is by her nature a profoundly asymmetrical horse. She was happy enough so my plan is to see if riding her like this leads to a worse trot because of damage or a better trot because of muscle development capable of correcting the trot.

I watched her all summer of '07 and Ian was jumping her. I rarely saw her trot get especially worse. Usually when it got worse it was from taking her on excessively hard ground, or working her beyond what she's capable of. So we shall see.

I also rode Keno bareback for like, ten minutes and then decided it was too much effort to either hold my calves against his sides without a saddle to boost me up, or to go get a saddle so I put him back. He has a fun little tiny trot. I didn't think he could effectively pick up a canter with it, but he picked it up a lot better with his tiny slow trot than with his faster but less focused trot. I need to strengthen my hold-calves-against-sides-of-too-short-horsey muscles.

I felt really productive on Thursday. Showed up at 10 and swept/turned Lady and Papillon out in the pasture. Colonel absolutely flipped out at that. He was screaming for them, screaming and staring at me, running in and out of his stall, and banging on the door to try and open it. Poor guy hasn't really been eating, but it's showing up in his mental state rather than his physical. Lady and Papillon kicked it up a little bit but mostly stuffed their faces.

Brought them. Tessa's mom was out of town and asked Robert to lunge her, so he asked me to lunge her. She was extremely mistrustful of me haltering her, but she's pretty calm and quiet. Didn't want to walk at first so we did some trotting, and then she relaxed. She knows ropework better than lunging, I think, but I did a little of that with Claire so it worked out just fine. Put her back just in time to help Jerry unharness Imp. Once that was done I grabbed Luca and harnessed him up to go out in the field. We had a nice drive with Robert, he was pretty full of himself but well behaved overall. He is standing so much better, it's unbelievable. Rinsed him off and went to lunch. Robert took a long lunch. I turned out Colonel and Libby while I ate.

So I got dressed and rode Niki. She was, well, pretty terrible at first, but improved by leaps and bounds (occasionally literally, but not the "improving" part). Jessi and Bella and their entourage came in at one point and she was very upset about that. Our circles got much worse. So I pulled her off of the rail, because that's where she's been going crooked, and we did a 10-15m circle at the far end of the arena for a long time. We worked on bending and following her head, and not popping her shoulder out. She actually got pretty good at that, did a brief spook when Bella left, but kept working just fine. I rode her back to the crossties and Jessi asked if I was going out in the field. Um, no. Two green horses, a green rider, and a rider who's nervous about riding in the field is NOT a good combination. Plus I had a lesson with Robert anyways.

We did the trot and canter poles again. He's definitely getting the idea, but still wants to cut in and drop his shoulder. We did 10m canter circles whenever he wanted to do that, and he started getting nice and balanced. He picked up the wrong lead a lot, though. We need to work on bending. Robert was pleased by his progress but I was insanely frustrated (largely from not drinking any water and going straight from Niki to Luca). He made up for it by being cute. I was trying to demonstrate to Robert that while I was holding Luca towards the rail after the canter poles, it was because I was trying to make him go straight, and if I let him go he would drop his shoulder and run towards the gate. Instead, we cantered over the poles, he dropped his shoulder and cut the corner (it was UGLY), and aimed straight for the trot poles and cantered over those. That restored my good humor immediately. He's just a weird guy.

But I still didn't feel accomplished. So I asked Robert to look out for just one of us coming back, and rode Luca out in the field. We just walked around one circuit, but he was really good. We crossed the bridge across the creek, which I was a little nervous about (do not want to get dunked in beaver water), even though he's done it a billion times. Halfway across his head came up and he did a plant-all-four-feet spook. Wonderful! I saw the deer bounding away from us. I thought that was a pretty fair call on his part, especially as he moved on calmly. He also did a little sidesteppy trotty thing when something moved in the bushes next to us, but again, fair call. We did the water crossing too, and once I reminded him he wasn't supposed to trot up it he was fine.

I rode Keno with a saddle. That was mediocre. He gets weird cantering in the arena. He's much better in the little dressage one outside. He was busy eyeing Sunny and sticking his head up in the air as much as his short little neck will allow. We got a nice trot though, once we went over the trot poles. I guess I should hop on him more often and give him a real work.

Four horses worked, one of them twice, and four horses turned out. Woohoo!

Rode Luca again. He was an absolute jerk to lunge- taking off, bucking, tried pulling the lunge out of my hands once. We did a bunch of transitions up and down and suddenly he remembered his job. He was a fun ride. We set up three poles at E and B, first at trotting length, then lengthened one set to canter strides. I'm not convinced we got the striding right, at all, but he was definitely balancing himself better. We did some 10m canter circles (because he wouldn't bend otherwise) and oh, oh, we stayed cantering through them, and I didn't need to balance like a barrel racer to stay straight on the horse! It was lovely.

Robert has been redoing all the doors to runs in the hay barn so they're on the inside of the barn, rather than the outside. We reached another crucial step in the "girls and powertools" stage when he told me to use the drill to disassemble an outer door he'd taken down. And went over and showed me the bit I would need to use, where the charged battery was, and how to take the battery out of the drill (which I failed at- need less fingernail, more finger strength), which were all critical parts of the process, it turns out, and things I didn't know. He also showed me how to change the bit, which, whatevs, that's fine. And then he left to go teach a lesson! I ran in briefly to have him open the drill to take the battery out, but that was that- I took the door apart and stacked the wood and we didn't have another conversation about it. It was fantastic.

Less fantastic was not doing anything the rest of the day. Chuck is trying to sell Niki, and wanted to know how she was doing/when I'd be around so he could take pictures of me riding her. And I mean, I don't want to buy her, but I really do like riding her, and she's the first horse I've really had control over her training-- I didn't start her from the ground up, but I've done *everything* with her after longlining in the riding process. And I think I figured I'd have more time with her. I could have had a lot more done with her if I hadn't been so lazy, so it's not like it wasn't my fault, but it's still a little upsetting. Robert and Chuck keep telling me that once Niki is sold, Jewel (his new horse) will get brought down here and I can ride her all I want. Jewel is apparently a real nice quarter horse, trained for cutting but not good enough to be in the money, and I guess can do a decent reining pattern. Which makes me immediately think of mugwump, of course. It'll be fun, but I like taking a green horse and showing them something, and having them realize what you want and be happy to do it. Niki and Will were both a lot of fun that way.

I guess one of these days I'll buy a horse, and then regret not being able to hand it back to an owner when I don't want to deal with it anymore. Bleh. At least Keno is somewhat desperate for attention, whickering wildly whenever I walk by. It's a little pathetic.

Saturday went much better than Thursday did, though it was pretty unhorsey. I came in just as Rose, Julie, and Buzz were leaving. Ate lunch and hopped on Keno bareback. As usual, I wasn't planning on working him very hard, but we got into a groove with our figure eight canters. He was doing much better about trotting through the middle. He's a tad reluctant to pick up his right lead, but that's because he gets excited and high headed about it and doesn't want to drop left lead first. We did get a nice transition, right lead, one trot step, left lead.

Next I worked on fences for a long time. I hate fences. If I had more upper body strength I think I wouldn't hate them nearly as much. But I got Niki and Star's fence up, and Bella and Tillie's fence too. I tried fixing Lady and Papillon's run but settled for mediocrity.

Instead of working Luca, Robert and I unloaded approximately 80 bales of hay from the yellow truck and his truck. Buzz had baled them yesterday, and it was scheduled to rain, so Robert loaded them all up in the trucks and drove them indoors. I was on the truck and Robert was stacking them. He looked appropriately mortified when I teased him about sending the girl scared of heights up on the truck, until I told him it was just a ladder thing.

Hm. Short day, most of it spent feeling terrible.

Got there at 11, swept, helped untack Imp. Libby had wrecked her hotwire while I was sweeping (and was pretty distraught about it all), so I turned off the fence and redid her section. Hopefully it'll stay up a little longer.

Spent a long time with Luca. Robert had us do basically a figure eight like an 8, with standards to denote what to turn around and cones to get us cleanly through X. We started at a walk, then did a trot, then cantered one side, then cantered both with a trot through X, then picked up the next lead. Luca was a big fan of this, actually. He started pulling some pretty tight turns and getting much more balanced. He also figured out the trot-at-X thing. He'd feel pretty strong heading towards the gate at a canter, but come right back exactly at X.

Uh, started riding Niki. She was pretty good. We chased the black feral cat out of the arena and she seemed interested in that. We did walking serpentines. After a while she stopped to stare at Buzz hooking up the tractor to his truck and I realized that, while I've never passed out, what I was feeling was pretty much what I imagined it would feel like. So we walked over to the gate, chased the cat the other way (she loved that, actually), and I hopped off and sat down for a bit. Then walked her back, put her back, and went to the house to inform Robert that I was going home.

It's been a while!

Saturday was a bit of an epic failure as far as horses go. I'm pretty sure I only worked Luca. Who was really good, by the way. We only had one cut for the gate. While I was saddling up he was bouncing his head up and down, but didn't move a foot, so the important parts of his body stayed in place. Good enough for me.

Ah! The reason why I spent so long with Luca. Right. I remember this now. It's been a long few days. Um, so Luca counterbends very badly to the left. Robert pointed out that, among other things, the saddle was shifted far to the right and my right stirrup was a hole longer. I was also giving him pretty strong half halts, which I remembered/Robert discussed with me don't really work with Luca. He prefers more subtle aids and will just outright ignore you if you give him a cue too loudly. So Luca and I ended on a really good note. Another thing I didn't remember, which was sort of dumb, was that getting the correct bend is more important than getting a nice full 20m circle.

I think Robert realized, maybe finally, that I really don't know what to do with a green horse a lot of the time, and I do appreciate lessons and suggestions.

I swept in and out of the barn like a ninja on Monday morning. I needed some tools that day that I'd forgotten on Saturday, so I ran in on the 8:50 bus, grabbed tools, swept the aisle, scratched my ponies, and ran out on the 9:30 bus. Apparently Robert was kind of confused as to how the aisle got swept.

Tuesday was more productive. I got there at 10 and worked Luca ("the boy") until almost 12. We did the doubling thing, against the wall and into the arena, and it was good. He's really learning to work under saddle, and to chill out and stand when it's time to chat.

Ate some food and headed back out. My task was to put up hotwire around Jade and Niki's run, as far out as possible. I did what I could, ignoring some laws of physics, discovered it wouldn't work because of said laws of physics. I needed to put some eyebolts in the side of the barn so the tape would be far enough out there. Robert interpreted my "I need to put eyebolts in there" as a "what should I do?" rather than a "I need to put eyebolts in there, and I am letting you know so you can give me permission to put holes in your barn." Response: "Put some eyebolts in there!" Okay, yeah, sure.

I've been doing stealth repairs around the barn for a little while now. Robert doesn't like to let girls use powertools, even though I've used them for four or five years now and am pretty comfortable with the basic drill, chop saw, etc. So when he goes out for a lesson, again, I am a ninja. So far I've moved two saddleracks, built a saddle pad stand (that Gillian designed, and which he did know about), and put a bucket back on the wall. I thought we'd reached an agreement that I would do things and we would both pretend it wasn't happening. Because, hey, whatever works.

Back to the story- so I found some eyebolts and no way was I just sticking them in the wall and twisting. So I grabbed a drill and walked right by Robert, daringly. He eyed it, noticed it had the correct bit, and went back to talking to Jessi. Neither of us said a word.

Put the eyebolts in, fixed the hotwire up. Niki was in her stall, but pushed the door to her run open enough that she could stare at me while I was doing it. It was pretty cute. I also fixed BJ's bucket, which he'd knocked off the wall again.

Went to see what Jessi and Bella and Robert were doing. They were working on having Bella relax and drop her head at the walk, and Jessi wasn't really getting it. So I hopped on and walked around a few times. That saddle is painful, but Bella seemed nice enough if drafty and opinionated. Hung out for the rest of the lesson, then hopped back on Bella and trotted around. Awesome, fantastic jog. We got a little stuck at one point and backed up for a few minutes, but I got bored and popped her lightly with the reins and we continued on our merry way.

Colonel, of course, hasn't been eating his grain since Gillian left. I took him out and lunged him while Robert was lunging the POA pony Spirit. Poor Colonel was trying so hard to be a good boy that he was listening to me and Robert for a while before he figured it out. I don't think I worked him hard enough. I might ride him, with Gillian's blessing, or I can longline him. He's starting to get more ribby and pathetic.

Watched the end of Spirit's lesson, then pulled Niki out for a lunge. She was crazymare, and does a stupid bunnyhop with her hind feet when she pulls out all the stops on her go-go-go. She was not fond of the green plastic chair sitting in the middle of the arena. She doesn't relax on the lunge and she was breathing pretty hard, so I wanted to cool her out before I put her back.

Being stupid, I put both clips on the right side ring of her halter, ran the line over her neck and back through the left side ring, gathered up the excess, walked over to the mounting block and hopped on. No helmet, of course, feel free to scold me. We had a nice walk, very happy and calm. There was some poor planning on my part (like relying too much on friction) which resulted in poor left turns, but we figured it out, and she still had an excellent whoa. We walked around a few times, headed out to put her back, so I thought, but she reaaaaaally wanted to head out towards the field. I'm not that dumb, though, so we walked around the grass arena and quit.

Poor Keno is getting ignored. Ah well.

Last trip before a ten day break

I was pretty sluggish about getting to the barn on thursday. I got held up at the dog park for one thing. Then a little shopping trip to goodwill and when all was said and done it was 1 pm before I got to the barn. Despite this I managed to work three horses. I helped with the new POA pony, Spirit. He is learning to lunge. He is a pretty cool customer, too cool really, but I think it bodes well for his future as a cart horse. Like Robert says, it doesn't take a real mental giant to get a horse moving.

I longlined Colonel. He was a little more peppy than the last session. One thing is we learned that leaning on my hands is, in fact, optional. Hooray! We'll have to see if he remembers that when I get back. I'm still not sure what I'm looking for before I get back on him. I think I might do some diagnostic canter transitions. If they're getting good, I'll get back on him, if not, more walk-trot-walk transitions. I'd especially like him to canter without leaning on my hands and without me having to string the reins through the bit and back to the surcingle. Is this too much to ask? Sigh.

Alyssa set up trot poles and some standards but Keno had a stone bruise. She wanted someone to use them, so I saddled up Star. She was really really good about the tracktor running out in the field. She looked at it repeatedly, got a little excited, but within minutes she was totally cool with it. She barely shied at the barrels in the arena either. We basically had the same rutine as our previous session, with basically the same results. It just didn't take quite as many repetitions to get a jump I was happy with.

Really I'm happy she did it at all. Used to be that getting Star to do something once wasn't the biggest hurdle, it was getting her to do it consisntently. I wonder if she still hesites going over the bridge. Eventually I'll have to do that so we can lead Alyssa and Niki over behind the far creek.

After feeding time, at like 4:15, the sky suddenly went really really dark. Severe storm warnings were in effect, and Colleen drove us home so that we wouldn't be stuck in the rain and 60 mph winds and so on. I'm told that in some places there was hail the size of golf balls. Ouch.

No such things in CA here. I'll see if I can get some riding lessons in an AP saddle so I wont feel so awkward. It is not like riding a bicycle.