Ooopsie-Daisy

When I got to the barn Imp and Luca were just finishing up a lesson doing some sort of pas de deux thing. Luca wasn't sweating much (Imp was) so I thought maybe Robert would take him out into the field afterwards, and maybe I could mooch an opportunity to do some more Luca driving. No such luck but Robert told me to hop in and he'd give me a ride back to the barn. I didn't have a helmet but it was such a short ways back to the barn so, I let it go.

I stepped in the cart, Imp left the arena, Luca tried to walk after him, I lurched a little in the cart, Robert gave Luca a forceful halt cue, Luca slammed it in reverse the way he sometimes does, inertia bit me. Yup, my head stayed roughly where it had been before and the cart slammed into my shins. I flipped over and landed on one of the tugs but I was too far over to get back in the cart. I was clearly going to fall off and Luca was starting to wiggle with all this weird stuff happening so I tucked my knees a little, pushed myself off and as soon as I hit the ground rolled away from the cart, most importantly, rolled away from the wheels. I got up and brushed myself off. Robert was startled by the falling but also impressed by my quick rolling action.

I stepped back up on to the cart. Of course, Luca starts running backwards, but this time I stuck my arm out and braced it against the front of the cart. It was actually a close call which irritated me. Then there was a little bit of classic me-Robert dialogue
Robert: I was going to grab you...
Me (interjecting): I'm sure you were
Robert: but I wasn't sure where to grab you.

Robert asked me to longline Dylan, so I got him out. He was OK on the long lines. The reins I picked out were too short, so that was problematic. I think that Dylan's problem is that he doesn't really notice a lot of my cues, and he also thinks that as long as he also does the thing he's told he can go ahead and do whatever else is on his agenda. So, I say walk and he walks, then he sees some manure, so he stops to sniff it. He sees no problem, he did what he was told. I see a problem, he failed to do only what he was told. Robert wants to introduce him to the cart tomorrow. Its been over a year since I helped Robert put a cart on a horse, but I think this will be very different than with the two pony bit... I mean, mares.

I spent a long time getting the rein stops on star's bridle despite the fact that I wasnt going to be using a martingale today. Robert put one on using more brute force than I would have let him use had I known that was his plan. The rein with the buckle wasn't going to be conquered with brute force so I took my 50 cent rein stopper and drilled into it with a power drill until the opening was wide enough to slide over the other rein. Its not on as tight as the other one, but it really doesnt matter at all.

I got star out and she walked up to the hay barn without balking! I have no idea why. I didn't have a whip or a carrot so maybe we both got distracted and we just walked right up there without incident. Anyway, I started brushing her down and vast vast quantities of dirt were coming up. Not off mind you, just sitting there on top of her fur. Some of the dust had blown away mind you, but there was just an astonishing amount of dirt.

That got me thinking about how I was going to clean her for the show on saturday. (how is it september already?) She is pretty scared of being washed so I dont really want to go through all the soap and stuff. Its bad enough that I'm going to put her in a trailer, close the divider and the door and then drive off with her still in it. I dont really want to pile on more distressing things. So I decided this was a good time to introduce her to the vacuum cleaner. The thing itself she wasn't too worried about. I held it up and she dutifully sniffed it and then went on looking out at the horizon. Then I brushed her with it still off, she didn't care about that at all, it felt just like a brush I'm sure. Then I turned it on. That got a little attention but I had moved out onto the blacktop. I tried to vacuum some of the dirt off myself and Star watched with interest. I brought it to her and she decided that this was the sort of thing best sniffed from a distance, so she opened her nostrils really wide and took deep deep breaths. She tolerated being brushed with it for short intervals so I just brushed until she calmed down about it and then stopped. Then brushed some more. One pass with the vacuum is insufficient for most of her body, her hindquarters particularly but she'll accept it on both sides now so I'll do it again tomorrow, on friday and on show day. Hopefully that will suffice.

I tacked her up and took her out to the arena. Seabreeze and Sue were in the arena. We stopped and chatted, Star and Breeze were perfectly friendly with each other even though they were standing pretty close. Sue is going to the show on saturday also, but not as early as I am so we wished each other luck and she left. To warm up star and I walked through all the movements in the test. Walk down the centerline, halt, salute, walk, etc. It took star a while to get the idea behind the free walk. We dont go diagonal across the arena much at all. To practice having her reach her head down I had two piles of manure directly on our line of travel. I didn't do it on purpose, obviously, but it wound up being of some help. It had its detriments, she was being allowed to sniff it so she wanted to stop, on the other hand, she put her head all the way down.

Our circles at the walk were pretty nice, from what I could tell. My turns down the centerline were excellent, I was pleased with us. She stopped reasonably square I think.We ran through the test a couple of times and the first few went OK. It started to break down after a while, maybe she got bored.

The big problem isnt in the free walk, its in the trot circles. She, predictably, wanted to canter on these circles. She's always liked to canter rather than trot on circles but that really really needs to be fixed. It was a nice enough canter really. And as I asked her to stop she was quite resistant but gave me progressively slower and slower canter strides. Towards the end, oh, she was so smooth and collected I wanted to let her go but I restrained myself (and her.) Anyway, it was really difficult to convince her that we were supposed to be trotting. I think she associates circles + me paying attention to my position and her bend, with cantering.

Tomorrow I'm going to try to ride her twice. In the morning I want to slap on a western saddle and the running martingale and take her outside. After some warming up, going across the creek, etc. We're finally going to spend some quality time cantering around the field. If she gets so fast that it makes me nervous we'll do an ~20 m circle. That does seem to slow her down a little, but she's been really lazy lately so I think it wont be a problem.

Ride number two will be shorter. Dressage saddle in the arena, we'll work on our test. Robert will sit behind the judges table and critique. Both the table and Robert will scare Star but thats fine, thats the point. I'm debating whether or not to use the running martingale at all, and if so whether to use the one thats too big for her, or try to fit the other one too her and try it out. I dont really care if she looks all cute and on the vertical but I do care if shes tossing her head to evade the bit while I'm asking her to stop cantering