I've been trying to see if I could get star ready for a show in september. My goal is to complete the test without dying of either embarrassment or horse related complications. Not killing anyone else would be good too. To do the show she needs to trailer and she needs to do the intro test maneuvers. She will walk into the trailer and stand there for a long time. I still havent tried to put the divider up against her. That should be fun!
Recently I'd been doing some ground work with her because she seemed so unbalanced. It turns out she's pretty handy with the ground poles and I decided last week that I was going to stop fooling around with any more ground work and get on her and ride. Well, ride I did, and it was pretty good. She did her traditional shying away from the scary end of the arena but she actually stopped doing that eventually. Even at a trot and canter. I wasn't going to canter her today but I have been psyching myself up all week to really ride hard and to crop her when she stops moving. I had been wimping out on both fronts. Today we trotted until she was pretty docile and we did lots of circles, some of which were solidly mediocre (thats good for us) if I do say so myself. Then I decided that as long as I was feeling so brave I might as well push my luck and canter. Star usually likes to do a few strides of canter and then stop dead, and sometimes rear a little. She'll do this at a trot too but the deceleration is worse at the canter.
Usually when we pick up the canter is a pretty choppy thing that metamorphoses into a very fast, pretty smooth, canter. I always choke up on the reins so she'll slow down. That pisses her off. Today I decided that I was going to do my best to steer and just let her do her thing. At the trot this had worked well and she had eventually settled down. At the canter this was very very scary, but I lived, and stayed on, and for a while she relaxed and did a nice canter. Then she stoped and bucked. I hit her. She reared. I hit her more. You get the picture. I was pretty proud of myself, I recovered my stirrup and we went straight back into the canter. We went halfway around the arena and then we stoped and panted. I might have been just a touch more out of breath than she was. ;) We went once around the arena the other direction, her bad direction, with minimal fuss and what I really hope is her maximum speed. The little horsey can move when she wants to!
She stayed pretty square on her feet though, despite my leaning dangerously into the center around some of the turns. I'm going out there on monday and we're going to do the same thing, but for longer. Canter circles should be interesting too. Maybe I'll wear my body armor in case I fall off. I still havent fallen in that stuff and I want to see if it helps me be less bruised.
There was a lot of fuss over the two percheron? geldings that were just purchased. These are the ones Alyssa found, or rather they come from the same people that Alyssa found. They are gorgeous specimens of geldinghood. They were the hitch horses in a log pulling team. Maybe that means something to someone but thats what they told me. They apparently dont crosstie all that well, we found out. So we did some leading and then they were going to tack them up one by one and hitch them to the wagon and drive them. I got bored and it was getting late in the afternoon so I decided I'd get papillon out. I couldn't bring her to the hay barn and I didn't want to lug the saddle out so I took Papillon around the field bareback.
She was pissed that I didn't appreciate what hot stuff she is. She is a performance horse, in her mind she races over log jumps and water hazards winning ribbons and praise. She is actually an old, arthritic ex-broodmare who did some eventing in her younger years. Papillon doesn't let go of things very easily. She still is absolutely fascinated by baby horses, and she still thinks we're going to go out and jump whatever we can find in the field. Instead, we walked. We walked twice around the field while I did my best to stay off her thoroughbred spine, which is now more prominent since we cut her grain and she's not so fat anymore. I should have grabbed a bareback pad, but it was good exercise for my already tired thigh muscles.
I put her back so I could go on a wagon ride. The pair, bob and duke? did very well. They nearly stalled out a few times but everything was very new to them so I think thats forgivable. I wanted to take Luca out for a drive but we didn't get the time. I want to get Robert to the point where he will let Alyssa and myself drive him on our own. If he's going to get worked under saddle he'll need to be worked under cart a lot more too, keep him feeling a little more subdued. If Alyssa and I can do it ourselves then Robert's busy, unpredictable schedule wont slow us down as much. I'll have to be at the top of my game on monday because I think it will take a few good drives to impress Robert, but the first one needs to be good. Luca will be "on the muscle" as Robert likes to say. Thats the condition I need to prove worthy of handling.
Wish me luck.
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