My Little Doppleganger

I wanted to share some more recent pictures of Sunny (taken last weekend)with ya. She's progressing faster than I could have every imagined or anticipated. She's BRILLIANT! She is totally me in horse form...little blonde firecracker! Loving every second of it! Tell me what you think of the pics!


We match ;)


Learning to maintain rhythm, relaxation, and contact at the walk on the 22' line


Learning the weave pattern--my focus is terrible-lol


Figure 8 Draw :)


Figure 8 Drive :)


First intentional canter on the 22' line. Looks pretty pleased with herself ;)


Little bit of liberty...


A good scratch...


Disengaging the HQ


Marveling over her awesomeness, I'm sure.


Playing "Follow Micky" is a fun game!


Anyway, that's all for now. She's really really awesome. She's got a solid L2 going online, and is very soon to follow on the Freestyle front--she's riding walk/trot/halt/back/sideways now, and also ponies from Prin's back beautifully. She's an awesome little learner! I'll try to take some video within the next couple of days.



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Audition Results!!!

EVERYONE got their auditions back today, it seems. First of all, I'd love to give a huge shout-out to two of my students, first to Arianna Halverson and her pony Princess, they passed their Level 1 audition today! These two are the most awesome students ever, very focused and determined. YAY! Red String here you come!


Secondly, congrats to Sherri Anderson and her mare Cerra. These two just passed their L1 AND L2 today! I did the filming on their auditions, and am pleased to say the results and feedback were positive and useful. Can't wait to see those pretty colored strings on your belt either, girl! How exciting!



VERY proud of you both!


I'd also like to announce that I received my results on my Level 3 Online and Freestyle (still pending on the Liberty). I passed both those auditions with L3+ and FANTASTIC feedback. I'm not entirely pleased with L3+ (perfectionist, I know!), but I take comfort in the fact that they're almost 3 months outdated, and I KNOW that Prin and I have improved far beyond that. I'm also really happy to say that we received L4 on our relationship, rapport, and Level 4+ on mounting, friendly game, and one other (don't have the specs sitting right in front of me)...not to mention tons of L3++'s and a few L3+'s. I hope to hear about liberty next week perhaps :) I'm REALLY proud of my girl, and am very happy to have finally heard back. The feedback received was useful and wonderful.


So YAY!

Congrats to everyone!

Awesome times THREE!

I had a busy busy day today, and of the three real sessions I had (I played with a 4th, but only to keep him occupied while the others ate their grain) were absolutely FANTASTIC. I haven't felt that productive with my herd in a VERY long time. I played with Crest, Cricket, and Prin, and I think the easiest way to summarize will be to just go down the list.


Crest:
I've been trying really hard to get into a consistent schedule with Crest, since he thrives best when he's played with often. So, since the last time I blogged, we've actually played twice, not including today. Anyway, we've been playing with really progressing in the patterns. The ground was too hard by the time I got them last fall, so I only got to introduce them to him.

All I can really say is HOLY CRAP, this horse is a speed-demon learner. I knew that about him from the start, but he's now blowing my mind more and more. I started playing with these patterns at L2 two days ago, and today, he was consistently offering me L4 with everything. He kept pulling flying changes out of NOWHERE, he was cantering like I've never seen before, and his circles were GORGEOUS, and amazingly rhythmic!

After being thoroughly mind-boggled by Crest's ground play, I decided to hop on and do some stuff. We started out just walking around and playing with walk-halt transitions, which he did flawlessly. We toddled around the playground a bit, w/t/c and playing with obstacles, and then I somehow got the idea that we should play with turns on the haunches. It started out a little bit rocky, being that it's physically challenging for him, but we played through it slowly and persistently, and by the end, I was getting some LOVELY pivots, and twice got what I think were pretty high-quality spins. He's truly a very athletic horse, he just needs proper guidance, etc.

Cricket:
Poor Cricket is going through some difficult things right now. I'm just starting to get her back into riding, something that hasn't been kind on her in the past. She's basically been taught nothing but to resist, and unfortunately, has been punished for a lack of understanding. The result is a very skeptical, very unsure, very unconfident horse in all aspects of riding. I've spent the past couple weeks getting her friendly to the concept of being saddled. I pulled out Prin's original saddle for the job. It's a cute little general purpose Trainer's brand saddle, pretty narrow, but has decent weight distribution throughout the panels, which is why I chose it. Coupled with the Theraflex, it does fairly well.

Anyway, today, for the 3rd day in a row, we've played with bridling. Cricket must have evaded bridling really well in her days prior to my riding, because she knows practically every trick in the book to get away from it now. Today went fairly well though, we only had to "discuss" yielding to poll pressure for about 3 minutes, as opposed to the 15 and 5 we spent the past two days.

Once we got bridled, I hopped on, and proceeded to play with fluid rein. I've got her in the confidence snaffle because of the rough handling she's had in her mouth previously. Three days ago, When I'd get on, she'd turn her neck inside-out to get away from any sort of pressure on her mouth. Today, we made HUGE strides with fluid rein. Though a bit skeptical (and astounded!) that I really wanted her to stretch into the bit, Cricket finally got the idea, and we spend a half an hour walking and trotting around with Cricket's nose barely above the grass, exhaling and blowing almost every stride. Talk about a pressure release! It's going to be a long road, but she's going to make a LOVELY riding horse. I'll be continuing this journey, so keep checking back :)


Prin:
Today's session with Prin will be dubbed successful simply because it was short, sweet, and I totally blew my horse's mind. I had originally planned to tack up and take her out for a long trot up the road, but after I heard gunshots coming from Dusek's, our neighbors up the road (the 3 brothers shooting pigeons, no doubt), I decided that we'd better not. So, I hopped on bareback, and took her for literally a 5 minute ride. We cantered up the driveway, to the top of the hill, stopped, backed up, did a roll back, and cantered home. Once I got back, I took her to the tackroom and I groomed her from head to tail, gave her a cookie, and put her back. The look of astonishment on my horse's face was fantastic, and I know I left her wanting more because she followed me along the fence line as I walked out.


So. All in all, a VERY productive day. I love spring, I love my horses, and my life is going very well. I'll hopefully get the camera out this week sometime if it's not too nasty (they're predicting freezing rain/snow on Tuesday), and will keep progressing along.

Keep it natural, and I'll post again soon :)

FINALLY!!!

Hehehe...www.pnhsavvy.com check out the "New L2 Graduates" list.

It's a VERY long story, and I actually graduated L2 a LONG time ago (Lets try June 07) but thru a series of very bogus twists and turns, it never became official.

See, I was on the Savvy Team in Madison in June of 2007. I was not an L2 graduate officially, but when Pat was announcing/introducing the Savvy Team, he announced that I was one. Of course I was curious about this, so I asked him afterwards (at the end of the day) and he shrugged it off, and said "I've seen your videos, I saw you ride last night...you're L2." and that was that. But unfortunately, that never went into the computer system, so I never got an awards pack, just Pat's word saying I was L2 (which is lovely, don't get me wrong, but kind of hard to explain)

So anyway, fast forward to Savvy Conference. Farrah has amazing powers of persuasion, and managed to talk me into approaching Linda about this whole thing, to get it official. That didn't get me anywhere really (other than a big ego boost, because Linda thinks I should go for green/black NOW) and so I left, still a bit uneasy. Interestingly enough, during lunch right after that conversation, I ran into one of my long-time instructors, Nita Jo Rush. After some discussion, Nita Jo and I came up with a plan, and what you see on her site is the product of her brilliance, and I owe her a lot. I will have a blue string in about 3-4 weeks...FINALLY :) So happy!

Luna-tic? Nah!

That is actually a very clever play on words, considering the horse I'm about to talk about.

The family friend that I got Crest from has a Quarab mare named Luna. Luna is 8 years old this year, a bay mare, 15hh, and the most fascinating extreme LB horse I've ever dealt with, simply because she's CUNNING. She thinks...and then thinks some more. And then acts...very deliberately.


Her horsenality chart. The two RB dots apply when Either a) I get too firm too fast, or b) she gets pushed over a threshhold.

Anyway, I've put something like 150 hours (I think?) of training on Luna, with mixed results due to MY level of savvy. When I'm on my game, we get along great, and we have a great time. But Luna's a defiant sort, and we've certainly had our fair share of, erm...interesting sessions. There have been times where she's fully deserved the nickname I used above..."Lunatic".

So, Luna is up at our place for another tune-up for a couple weeks. We brought her up yesterday, which couldn't have been easier, she loaded within 2 minutes or something (She put fronts, then loaded full, came out, then went in and we left her in) and settled in with her old herd buddy, Crest (he's in LOVE, by the way) and things went well.

Tonight, I decided, being that she and Crest were sappily hanging all over eachother (Is that REALLY how I looked the first 3 months dating Warren? I'm SO SORRY...UGH!) that she was pretty well settled in, and could do a bit of a play session.
I pulled her out, much to Crest's dismay (He RAN the fence line whinnying, and we were less than 50 feet away the entire time!). We started with the 22' line right away, just seeing what she remembered, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that the old nickname I gave her doesn't really fit anymore. She was not dominant at all, very compliant, played a very impressive set of L2 quality 7 games, and then decided that barrels were the most amusing thing in the world, and that knocking them over was the only way to go.

I hopped on and rode her around too, and she was VERY responsive, which is impressive, because with a rider, she has a tendency to become more LBI and "Make me!" and loves to buck into upward transitions. Tonight, that was not the case, and I was very pleased. I only walked and trotted, but her transitions were Phase 1/Phase 2 quality, and I was pleased with it.

Maybe this chunk of time can be devoted to refining her! YAY! She's great! So...Luna-tic? Nah! Horse that's grown up a lot in a year? Yeah! Will keep you posted as we keep going.


Luna in winter 2006.