Low-Key Fun :)

And now... I finally get back to blogging! :D I won’t expand on my reasons for not writing other than to say... I was busy... :P


Anyway... I spent 1 ½ hours outside with my lovely horses this afternoon. I was beautiful weather for playing in, cool, windy, etc, etc.. you get the point. :)

My lovely Lady was not terribly thrilled about being caught. My guess is that she isn’t particularly fond of being tied up for feeding and grooming, but who knows.

We played in the arena OnLine for about 30 minutes. The first thing I noticed was when I started with YoYo and her draw was sticky... very sticky... like... stuck. I managed to fix that mostly through repetitive yoyos and squeezes (Consistency!). She was fairly low-key today, unlike Wednesday’s Lipizzaner act, so I had to adjust my approach. :)

Another thing I noticed was her one-sidedness while doing Figure-8s. Her turn around the right hand barrel was absolutely lovely! Her turn around the left hand barrel was almost nonexistent. She came mostly around and then stopped, facing me as if asking a question (unless she is on adrenaline... those days she keeps running in a circle with no intention of stopping). I’m not sure exactly why that was today, whether it was a physical thing or not... I might have to check her back tomorrow...

Since she was so calm and tolerant, I decided to ride (only my second ride since last Thursday’s tumble). All of her preflight checks were solid, so we did the Follow the Rail pattern for a few minutes. The Level 1 Follow the Rail pattern involves 180s, walk-trot-walk transitions and walk-halt-backup transitions. We did all of those and I was VERY surprised how sharp her 180s were away from the rail!

Her circles today were less like blobs than the last few times! I had to correct her trot-away-from-the-circle trick only once or twice and we ended with 2 decently round circles to finish off with.

I finally got around to filling out Lady’s chart today. Most of her dots are in the mild/moderate slots. I labeled her one extreme mark as “charismatic” in the LBE quadrant. All in all, she placed with 1 extreme and 3 moderates in LBE, 3 mild marks in LBI, 2 moderate and 2 mild in RBE and nothing in the RBI quadrant. The positive attributes chart filled out much the same, playing her as a Left Brain/Right Brain Extrovert with mild Left Brain Introvert qualities.

I also got to play with Tempest today and she did absolutely wonderful! :D It didn’t take more than minute or two until I could pet her and feed her cookies. I ended up being able to halter her, treat and take the halter off. I think she was curious and confident enough to have learned something through it...



Savvy on!

-Kit Marie