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.