Saturday at the barn

I hope I'm going to be able to go more than once a week someday. This coming week its all work work work, which is fine. Things will settle down there and all will be well.

I got out to the barn early this morning. I got caught up on the news. Chuck broke some ribs being stupid and then didn't go to the doctor for two days. Apparently he's going to get away with that part because he didn't want pain meds and apparently he did a good enough job setting his own ribs back in place that he will be fine. Someone I've never heard of, or maybe I have, anyway, someone is maybe buying some haflinger geldings? Alyssa found them and she can say something about them. I wasn't really paying attention to that part because they have this little wood puzzle on their coffee table. Its like tanagrams but it only makes one shape, a T. I didn't figure it out while I was there but partially because my attention was divided. Or so I claim. Papillon is in another stall now because she broke another waterer and flooded some more stalls.

I rode Papillon first today. She clearly needed some attention. I swapped out her french link bit for a loose ring snaffle. I think it was an improvement. She did a lot of power walking around the field and was reasonably tolerant of BJ (14 2 breeding stock paint gelding) bumping into her all the time. Then she started getting really pissy. I asked her to trot to see if that would make her feel better but I think maybe the flies had started getting to her. She had certainly picked up a pretty good swarm of them. I took her back to the arena and she settled down pretty well. Every time we crossed the short side of the arena by the gate she wanted to pick up the canter. I guess I wasn't working very hard to prevent that because I only bothered to stop her about half the time. The other half I just reacted once she started cantering.

Just for fun, after rinsing her off, I turned her out in the front pasture. She did some eating and some running around. She can stop really fast when there is a fence in front of her. It was rather terrifying to watch her before I figured that out.

As I was putting her back they announced the chuck's horse Nikki was going to come out of the arena hitched to the training silky for the first time. This little mare, (POA arabian cross?) has a lot of angry in her petite little body but she did really well and they put her back.

Alyssa and I ate some food with Sam (BJ's owner/rider), trimmed the berries back from our path to the bus stop, looked at the miniature horses and donkeys, and looked at some of the morgans next door. After that I cut up some carrots for star and we went out to do some more trot poles. Star recognized the trot poles and was very happy to have something easy to do in exchange for carrots. Robert humored me and agreed that she was trotting the poles very well.

I set up a little crossrail but it wasnt little enough. So i dropped both poles so that they were resting on the bottom of the standards and she walked over that a few times for carrots. Then I put one of the poles back in the cup. She was less pleased about that but was willing to do it for a carrot. She trotted over just the one half of the X and I didn't have enough carrots to put up the other half.

Alyssa and I both have a lot of carrots to get rid of so I have a plan. (Dont I always have a plan?) I'm going to get her trotting over a little X in exchange for carrots. We're going to keep doing the same height X in the same place for carrots for a long time. I want her to look enthusiastic about how easy it is for her to get this carrot. She was actively trying to cross those trot poles to get to the carrot she knew was waiting for her, and with practice I think she'll feel the same way about this X. I had been trying to get her to go higher and higher and higher but I think instead of building height I should just focus on building enthusiasm. It will be hard because I dont really have the patience for any one phase of a project for very long but I think that sending her over a "jump" will be suitably entertaining that I'll be able to stick with it.

We hitched Keno to a tire and made Alyssa drive him around. He pretended to be miserable and dying. She did really well driving him around and I had a nice chat with Lil. After that she and I took Reno out for a drive. Reno isnt the easiest horse in the world to drive but I guess I've gotten more comfortable in the cart because he didn't infuriate me with his personality the way he usually does. I think the arena would be different, or if I actually had something specific I wanted to do, or maybe I really have gotten more comfortable.

One nice thing about the cart is that your proximity to death doesn't really impact your physical comfort level. Riding a calm, controlled horse is very different from a panicked running away horse. Being pulled by a calm, controlled horse is pretty similar to being pulled by a panicked running away horse. At least as far as the actual ride is concerned. So when Reno spooked and bolted at the hedge trimmers next door it really was a non-event in my mind. "Oh hey, the ground is going by faster now, and Reno looks sortof upset. Huh. I guess I should slow him down." Riding a bolting horse at least part of my mind immediately starts chanting "OMG gonnna die gonna die gonna die...." So I guess I discovered that the actual bolting isnt really the scary part, which was interesting to me.

We fed and went home. I was going to ride star today, I was going to strap a western saddle on her and go out and really run, but I guess I'm going to have to claim I'm going to do that next time. Probably next time I'll just sit there sending her over an X and feeding her carrots but you know ... maybe I'll actually sit on her. ::sigh::