Day twenty

[glenatron]

The course began winding down a little today.

The morning began with more work for the black horse, who I think will come through really well. He wants to be a good horse but he gets scared sometimes with things in his blind spot.

We were slightly waiting for the owner of a lot of the colts to arrive, so who we rode in what order was somewhat up in the air. After they had worked with the black horse we fetched in an assortment of personal horses and in my case Chili, another of Martin and Jennifer's horses, and worked on whatever we needed to sort, which in my case was doing lots of loping and learning to get in time with Chili's canter. I was surprised how far back I needed to be leaning to get that right, which explained why I was having so many problems before. Martin talks about it as being like stopping half-way through a sit-up, your tailbone curled under you, your weight right back and your stomach muscles tensed. I think it would make Julian cry, but as a way of staying with the horse in this pace ( and not falling off if something unexpected happens ) it works pretty well.

Next up we were riding some of the other horses and I was on little elegant Daisy mare. That was a bit sad for me because between us we had taught her to wear a little pressure on the bit and she was happy to pull on me. We worked through it but she was very anxious and it was hard to keep her attention for long. Also Martin was working with Jack's moon horses and teaching them to work on the rope, tying them up high on the arena fence and then using his flag to move the horse's hindquarters around so they couldn't get stuck pulling on the rope and just would find the end of it and turn around. By starting with this as part of halter-breaking the horse you get them understanding that they don't pull on the lead rope and save on having them trying to run off on you because as far as they are concerned the end of the rope is fixed.

Martin did some work with them loose in the round pen as well to help start training them to find relief separately rather than clinging together. Watching them trot around the pen with their high knees and their elegant arched swan-like necks made it abundantly clear to me that I want a moon horse. I want to ride it around in graceful slow motion to the sound of theremins playing.

I wish I could have seen more of this but Daisy was continuing to be a little fractious and she needed most of my attention.

When we were done there, Martin suggested we do some roping, so I went and fetched Chewie and we chased the drag dummy that Martin was pulling around the arena and tried to rope it. Chewie was good because we had something to chase and he is good at chasing. It took a while, but we got it roped after a while, which was pretty cool- it may not be much to have roped a moving object from a moving horse, but it's more than I've managed before.

In the evening skye_ds, sonar0m and Arthur (no LJ as far as I know, but then he is a parrot) came to visit and it was good company and good food and we could have chatted a lot longer had the time been available.

Comments

[skye-ds.livejournal.com]

I miss you already *HUGS*

[penella22.livejournal.com]

Moon horses...interesting.