Road Trip!

Okay, I'm seriously REALLY BAD at updating this bad-boy. I think I might be the last person to actually accept that fact, but hey. I try. I really do!

Anyway, Prin and I had a little adventure over the past couple of days! As I had mentioned in a previous post, one of my goals currently is to head to Florida to do an Externship at Pat's barn. There is an application process to this, and one of the things that they ask for is an audition video. It's a pretty basic thing, the requirements are online, liberty, and freestyle, show saddling and bridling, ride some bareback, and some patterns under-saddle. All pretty easy stuff to do, provided you've got the footing to do it in the winter, which we certainly don't, right now.

So, on Thursday, despite freezing rain warnings, Prin and I loaded up and hauled to The Horse First Farm in Brooklyn (just south of Madison), WI, to film my tape with my friend and 2* Parelli Professional, Michelle Manshardt. This was my first solo haul, and it was a bit stressful--Firstly being that I was driving a borrowed rig, of course carrying my baby inside, and with the weather. Fortunately, it went fine, and I gained a lot of confidence in my ability to drive with a trailer. (Previously I'd only driven a couple small rigs locally is all) So that's a new arrow in my quiver of "stuff I can do within the horse world".

Thursday was pretty much my warm-up day. I still have a tendency to get a little paralyzed and forget how to use my brain in front of a camera, so the better a plan I can have ahead of time for what i need to show, the better I do. Prin was pretty much the happiest I've seen her in weeks, and after some tips and suggestions from Michelle, we had improved several aspects of our relationship (including our much-struggled-with large area liberty) substantially. My horse now sticks with me in the 100x200 arena (with a couple other horses in the arena at one point) without thought of leaving--too cool!

We finished out the evening at Sr. Peppers (local Mexican restaurant, one of my favs!) and had some nice chat time.

Yesterday was filming day...ahhhh! I'm not going to lie, I totally clammed up. Michelle was very patient with me, and although I'm sure it was really hard for her to watch, she was wonderful, and was able to play enough friendly-game with me and the camera, that after starting over several times, everything flowed. We got everything but three tasks filmed (freestyle patterns on a casual rein), simply because we were so crushed for time, my camera battery died, and Prin was HOT (talk about totally NOT being in condition to be moving for an hour and a half straight). But I feel REALLY good about what we got filmed, which doesn't happen very often. Though it's really kind of a glorified L2 tape (7 games on a 22' line, and at liberty, some bareback riding, saddle and bridle, mount, etc), everything looks SO quality and flowing, I feel very confident that it's exactly what they're looking for. I've got a few more tidbits to film before I send anything in, but I really do feel good about it!

So...that's what we've been up to. The time spent between my last few posts has pretty much been spent keeping my horses alive and getting other aspects of this application package put together. Oh, and I had a lesson with Kristi Smith in there a couple weeks ago too, on a gigantic, fancy Warmblood mare, who had a lot to teach me about emotions and fluidity. But that, my friends, is another story all together. So until next time, savvy on!