Okay, it's been a while.

I've been ignoring Niki due to time constraints. Keno and Luca I can stop at any given time, but I haven't ridden her enough, and she's not trained enough, to know if I'll have to press on when I'd rather get off and go feed or something. She's been longlined (VERY unhappily), I've spent some time scratching her in her stall, and I've saddled her and worked on mounting. Not that she needs it. Once she stands for the mounting block (she picks an angle to face first), she stands there. I used the stirrup for the first time and absolutely no response. Unlike, um, every other horse we have, she is rock solid about mounting. Maybe on Tuesday we'll go out and do the working thing again. We worked a little in the arena on Friday. It was particularly windy, and there was a sweatshirt on the open side of the arena blowing around, as well as the dressage letters no longer glued well to their plywood. She's a little hot, and I figured she'd spook at the sweatshirt and prepped myself. Instead, she walked by and turned her head to watch. That wasn't so bad, I thought. Next time around, she insisted on stopping at each of the letters and the sweatshirt to try and bite them. She was a little goosey around the closed end of the arena because there were scary noises she couldn't see. Sigh. She's also developed the lovely habit of half-heartedly kicking at her belly when I tighten the girth, which earns her a smack, and she won't do it again. She is really good about getting the girth tight, and she stands, it's just right after I grab the girth and right before resignation kicks in.

Keno, again, not too much being done. I think I'm in a riding funk right now, which is unfortunate. I've gone back to being scared of horses acting up and being idiots, which Keno quite enjoys. Le sigh. I think he's also bored, so I need to come up with some new stuff for us to do. I'll pull out the 101 Arena Exercises book and flip through to find something fun.

Friday I was by myself (spring break, so I was out all week) since Robert was at Expo. Our tack room was awful- you couldn't see the ground, and there was crap all over, no organization. Kind of like my room. Robert finally got fed up with it and gave me permission to clean it. There were about twenty cans of paint, six jugs of concrete stuff, and ten little folding chairs. I was supposed to move them from the main tack room to the far barn's room, which is probably about 400 feet? I'm terrible at distances. Anyways, I had no desire to carry all of that. I also didn't have much desire to ride horses, but Keno was due for an attitude adjustment. Thursday night I was thinking about it. Suddenly one of Robert's favorite sayings popped into my head, which he usually likes to chuckle over while hauling things to the trailer- "Who's the real beast of burden?"

My decision: fuck it, I'm sure not hauling those things over. A horse can do it! Out of the however many horses we have now I could use, I figured Keno would be the most likely to be a jerk and the least likely to actually be afraid of it. I can deal with him being a jerk, because he realizes pretty fast that giving in is way easier than fighting me, especially on the ground. So I pulled him out and slapped a surcingle (and the high quality saddle pad I have, because I was worried about the large amount of weight on a small area; it just happened to be the hot pink one) on him. I spent five minutes finding the amount of clips I needed (four, very assorted) and put a bucket on the lower clip on each side. He was displeased but settled down pretty fast. I hooked two more up and we moseyed over. Again, pissed Keno, didn't-care Alyssa. That round I did learn that those buckets need to be balanced. From the light post to the far barn I was by his side making sure the buckets didn't slip under him- "walk on" came reeeeeeal handy that trip.

He figured it out pretty fast, stood quietly, and put up with the folding chairs being clipped on too when all the paint was gone. Which was really all I wanted from him. The only thing that would have been better would be if I'd just put a saddle on him with d-rings, and ridden him over with the cans attached to the saddle. Ah well.

The tack room is wonderful, now. Lots of floor, and I swept it so there's no longer the broken glass from the ex-lightbulb. I'm pretty pleased. I can't wait for the two new saddle racks, so my saddles no longer have to be stacked on top of each other. Plus, I found a nice pair of leathers. This was Phase 1 of organization, where I got everything off of the ground. Phase 2, I'm still debating on whether it's worthwhile, is where I try to put all the shit that does one thing in one place (like nosebands. Why do we have so many damn nosebands? And why aren't they in the same place?). We may not have enough hooks for it.

Expo is another post, I've decided.