One of Those Impulse Buys

This is going to be a double-post Friday, since I'm cool like that, and I think each one of these stories deserves it's own title. So, me, being me, am always sort of semi-looking for nice horses for sale. Not that I can really afford to own more than what I've got right now, but anyway. So, quite often I find give-aways that, while being nice looking, aren't really what I'm looking for.

So anyway, I'm also a sucker for a big English sport horse. I've kind of turned Prin INTO that image because I'm such a sucker for it. Anyway, It's not often that a beautiful big English sport horse comes along at a price I can afford. Well... it did, at the least expected time ever.

There is a family that owned (until recently) a weekend home about 6 miles from me. They had a GORGEOUS facility, pool, rock climbing gym, prime horse facility, beautiful barn, and 3 gorgeous horses, one of which is this beautiful TB gelding.



He's a 12 yr old gelding, 16.3-17hh (haven't actually measured him yet, but he's at least as tall as Caesar, who's 16.3), Unraced thoroughbred who IMO, looks more like a warmblood. He moves more like one too, and I think he's an AMAZING dressage prospect off-hand, we'll have to see how he'd be as a jumper, too. I get a good feeling from this guy though, hes super fancy.

He'll be home on Tuesday, and after that, we'll play and see what happens. He's just too cool :) More later on him...pretty excited!

Life's a Dance...

Especially when you're riding Crest out for the first time all year :)

I had a VERY successful horsey afternoon with my kids. First of all, I did a practice-film of my L3/4 online audition. It was really good quality as far as play went, but the footing was so terrible that I could hardly ask her to canter, and thus could not submit it for L3/4 had I wanted to. But that's okay with me for now. The intention was not to ace it, but to get a feel for what needed doing, and how I might go about it when the footing was good. And honestly, I LOVED it. I was disappointed when my camera-person called the 8 minute warning ("I HAVE SO MUCH MORE TO SHOW!" was my thought)and I feel really confident in filming when the ground hardens (a week or two, yay) So I'm really glad I got that taken care of :)

After that, I went out on a really lovely ride with Micky and our mutual friend Sarah. Sarah took Prin, who was a gem, Micky rode Amigo (she's decided to do this more often, we could tell he missed being out), and I took Crest, which brings me to my title line. Today was our first "real" ride out this year, and Crest was...well...a total LBE-on-adrenaline dancing queen. I had saddled him up in the fluidity (MAN I MISSED MY SADDLE!) and had a new bit I wanted to try with him. He was fantastic, behavior wise, but totally high on life and thus very hard to ride because of his perpetual bounce tendencies, that were magnified by 10. The result? A passaging, dressaging, haunches-inning Warmblood-wanna-be who had ALL the moves.

I kept track, and Crest performed like 4 grand-prix level dressage maneuvers when asked, simply because it involved being fancy. I got like 150 yards of lovely passage, a hilarious set of VERY collected tempi-changes, and about 3/4 of a canter pirouette. How funny *eye roll*

So all in all, a very nice ride. Fun was had by all, and I'm really looking forward to progressing with Crest, now that his TRUE athletic ability has been revealed-LOL.

Savvy on, I'm off to bed EARLY tonight :D

A Nice Low-Key Day

Okay, so I'm really confused about this whole weather thing, here. It is March 12th, daylight savings has begun, and for the past week and a half, it has not been under 32 degrees, hardly, except apparently the past 2 days. The past two days, it's been 15ish degrees. Now, I don't know if you've ever experienced 15 degrees in March,but it's really bizarre. The ground wants to be warm. The sun wants to be warm. It feels warm coming from those two areas, and yet the air temperature is FRIGID, stubbornly holding onto the fact that it's still technically winter for another 9 days. Ah well, melt starts again tomorrow, and I'll be out playing in it!

Anyway, I didn't do a whole lot today because the footing is really bad (frozen manure and icy patches)but Prin and I toddled around and did some play with being particular in the walk. We both had a blast, surprisingly enough, (this whole attitude shift from negative nit-picky to positive particular is doing us wonders!) and even though I didn't ride for more than 20 minutes I bet, we had a ton of fun. Prin was SUPER light, and her shoulders were moving over SO fluidly!

It actually caused me to think back to my course, when we were first struggling with isolating and moving the shoulders over. I had spent the better part of all afternoon one day trying not to lose my patience, smack my horse with inappropriate phase 4's, or yell at Avery, who was trying to help me with it. That was not a pleasant afternoon at all, but I'm glad I persisted with it. Days like today remind me of how worth it it was. :) I can just feel our finesse developing in little sessions like that.

Oh, on a side-note about finesse, I recently recieved Walter Zettl's book "Dressage in Harmony" as a late Xmas gift from my friend Sarah. I've only just paged through it a little, but HOLY COW the man knows his stuff. It's a really thick book, probably about 300-400 pages, and every page is packed full of thorough, fantastic information, as well as drawings of maneuvers, exercises, theory, and troubleshooting. "From Basic to Grand Prix" is the subtitle, and it really doesn't do the amount of information justice. It really delves into the horsemanship and horsenality aspect (minus PNH references, of course) I can hardly wait to have good footing again, I'm thrilled to give the stuff a try :) I'll keep you posted on how that goes!

Anyway, time for dinner. Savvy on!

Clinic Break-Thrus

Okay, so I think instead of writing a full clinic recap (too much happens in a week to retell and give justice to in print), I'll just write about my BIG break-thrus that I personally had with Prin at the clinic Katie and I attended last week, and if I have time, I'll fill in with a broad recap.

I'm just going to start off by saying that this is just NOT my year for car care! Guess what happened today! My car broke down driving to Kris Fulwiler's place to audit a Karen Rohlf clinic! Not only did I miss the clinic, but my fuel pump may need replacing. YARGH! (more on that later) Anyway, with that out of my system...

I took Prin along with me to a week long clinic series with Farrah, and just had a fantastic time. The break thrus we had were mainly physical (okay, so the mental changed and the physical followed, but STILL!) and were HUGE.

Starting off, Farrah asked to use Prin early on to demonstrate a figure-8 pattern. Prin did great, but then did something mildly rude (don't remember what) and Farrah asked her to back up in response. Well, Prin completely flipped her the finger, figuratively speaking, and wouldn't back off, so Farrah REALLY got after her, and that's when she met Prin's swishing tail habit. After much energetic play and observation, Farrah turned to me and says "Does she do this a lot?" and I said "Um, yeah? I'm fairly sure I've mentioned it several times." and Farrah says "Hmm...It's interesting, it's almost like she's unaware that she's doing it! I'd say it was negative attitude, but 99.9% of the time, her ears are forward, and she's asking questions, but her tail is going." I responded with "I've noticed that! I have had trouble reading into it for exactly that reason. The tail isn't fitting the rest of the picture. It's almost like a nervous twitch that she's unaware of."

So, Farrah suggested that instead of playing friendly up front after I finished a game, I go straight back and love on her TAIL, to help her be more aware of it. So I did, and realized after one try that her tail was TIGHT! Which didnt' make any sense at all. I checked, and her lips were loose, ears floppy, head down, and yet, for some reason she bottled all this physical tension in her tail. So after every time I did something, I'd go back and massage her tail until it was loose and "Jello-y" as Farrah put it. Later on in the afternoon when everyone else was doing 2 rein driving, I did 1 rein on her head, one rein (savvy string braided in) on her tail. The observation I made was toward the end of the day, she was hardly moving it at all, and if she did, it was really at an appropriate time (if my phases were too high, etc) Very interesting.

Later on in the afternoon, Farrah put us riding a Figure-8 pattern, but instead of keeping zone 1 closest to the barrel, we were supposed to keep zone 4 closest. That was TOUGH, because I discovered that Prin was HARDLY using her hind end, and falling on her forhand...A LOT. Once she figured it out though, it was like someone flipped a switch. We also played with alternating engagement with flexibility on the figure 8, and just had a lot of fun playing with the body. OH! and we straightened out a very resistant, forhand-based back-up from atop Zone 3.

So anyway, fast forward to the next morning. I went down to Prin's pen to clean up, feed, water, etc, and the first thing I noticed was the way Prin was standing. Taller, straighter, HQ farther underneath her, and generally looking more comfortable. Very odd, but kind of neat, I thought. I went around, cleaning up and filling buckets, and then something else dawned on me. Prin has had a block in her ribs on the left, and tension in her left stifle, and has had mane flips (majority of her mane lies on right) to mirror that for as long as I've owned her. That morning, the flip that had been there for 5.5 years at the base of her neck was GONE. THAT freaked me out. I flipped it back, thinking "Oh someone must have smoothed it out this morning saying hi." Nope. Looked all wrong. Like it had never been there.

As the week went on, Prin just got more and more uphill, to the point I took out two shims from her pad! Her ability to collect, flex, bend, and engage went THROUGH THE ROOF, and the final night we were there, she offered me about an arena's length of true extended trot, which previously wasn't even in her ability to do in the PASTURE, let alone with a rider, and she also jumped a 3'6" or 4' tall cross-country fence bareback for me. And what's really neat is that since being home (tomorrow will be 4 days) the mane and posture has stayed, and the tail swishing is definitely going down! YAY!

So...HOW COOL?! Oh, and I also had the opportunity to test ride a Balance Zenith for a couple hours one day. Definitely like my fluidity better, but the Balance was VERY lovely too. Might think about selling my Wintec Wide and finding an inexpensive (haha, RIGHT) Balance.

So anyway, thats just some things we picked up. VERY helpful, even with Crest in some areas. And now...*poofs* I go to bed. Thank you all for being so patient and waiting for me to write something :)

Let It All Hang Out

Had a really carefree session with my ponies today, which is nice to have when my head is as full as it is today. Too much emotion in my life, and it's been driving me absolutely insane. It was just nice to let rip and "let it all hang out".

Firstly, I got out there and Prin marched up to me, stuck her butt in my face, picked up her back leg, and turned her head as if to say "Scratch me...now...do it..." What a brat. Anyway, I rubbed on her a little, then offered her the halter, and she went "Oh that...I think not." and walked away. Ah well. So...I plopped down on the bathtub, and what thoroughly surprised by what happened next.

We've got a new mare at the barn now (I'll post more about her as she warms up), but anyway, she's a 15 yr old APHA mare, sorrel and white, looks like a mini-Prin. Anyway, she's been quiet and seemingly RBI, very shy, and unwilling to come anywhere near humans, as she was mishandled before her current owner got her. Anyway, tonight, Cricket, who's hardly even pointed her nose toward me in the past, whinnied, and came trotting over, and settled right in, stuck her nose in my lap, and went "Hi...whats up?". We loved up for a while, I think she'll be a really lovely mare when she realizes I'm not all about catch and work.

Proceeded to rip around the pasture on Prin for about 30 min or so. Started with one rein and did some fancy stuff even with that...LOVE my light horse! Tied two reins then, and did some dressagy type finesse stuff, which she did pretty well for having to dodge the trot poles I had out from my session with Knight on Sunday. Then we did what my title suggests...we just RIPPED AROUND the pasture and let it all hang out for about 15 min. Other than being a little bit out of shape (YEESH PRIN!!) she did really well, and we enjoyed ourselves!

All in all a very nice evening, can't WAIT for summer to set in!