Last trip before a ten day break

I was pretty sluggish about getting to the barn on thursday. I got held up at the dog park for one thing. Then a little shopping trip to goodwill and when all was said and done it was 1 pm before I got to the barn. Despite this I managed to work three horses. I helped with the new POA pony, Spirit. He is learning to lunge. He is a pretty cool customer, too cool really, but I think it bodes well for his future as a cart horse. Like Robert says, it doesn't take a real mental giant to get a horse moving.

I longlined Colonel. He was a little more peppy than the last session. One thing is we learned that leaning on my hands is, in fact, optional. Hooray! We'll have to see if he remembers that when I get back. I'm still not sure what I'm looking for before I get back on him. I think I might do some diagnostic canter transitions. If they're getting good, I'll get back on him, if not, more walk-trot-walk transitions. I'd especially like him to canter without leaning on my hands and without me having to string the reins through the bit and back to the surcingle. Is this too much to ask? Sigh.

Alyssa set up trot poles and some standards but Keno had a stone bruise. She wanted someone to use them, so I saddled up Star. She was really really good about the tracktor running out in the field. She looked at it repeatedly, got a little excited, but within minutes she was totally cool with it. She barely shied at the barrels in the arena either. We basically had the same rutine as our previous session, with basically the same results. It just didn't take quite as many repetitions to get a jump I was happy with.

Really I'm happy she did it at all. Used to be that getting Star to do something once wasn't the biggest hurdle, it was getting her to do it consisntently. I wonder if she still hesites going over the bridge. Eventually I'll have to do that so we can lead Alyssa and Niki over behind the far creek.

After feeding time, at like 4:15, the sky suddenly went really really dark. Severe storm warnings were in effect, and Colleen drove us home so that we wouldn't be stuck in the rain and 60 mph winds and so on. I'm told that in some places there was hail the size of golf balls. Ouch.

No such things in CA here. I'll see if I can get some riding lessons in an AP saddle so I wont feel so awkward. It is not like riding a bicycle.