Saturday, May 21, 2011

great day

An active day on the ranch!!

The focus was Chrissy, but a whole lot of other things happened, too. Deb came over to use my property, which was fun to watch. Kendall wanted to ride today, too!

So, started off thinking to ride Gem and support Chrissy from Gem's back. Gem had been off for about a week due to my travel and I was surprised that he was a little silly. He didn't want to partner up, so we needed warm-up time. He didn't buck or anything, I think that's behind us. But he definitely had some other ideas about following my leadership at first. We started off on the 45' and he did ok, but once I mounted I felt some brace. Interestingly, we couldn't leave the property today. Later in the day, Deb and I thought to ride out some and Gem immediately hit a big wall. I bagged out of the ride and decided to rebuild Gem instead of pushing him through his threshold. It was hard, but it was the right thing to do.

Kendall wanted to ride Rain, so I decided to set up some challenging things with her to help her develop her seat. I asked her to go over some of the obstacles, with me leading and her riding bareback. She went over a 1 ft jump repeatedly, until it was easy. I just kept sending Rain over until I saw Kendall relax. I can tell she's relaxing because she starts talking a lot. :) Then we moved to the tractor tire pedestal. That was pretty scary for her at first, but again, we kept it up until she felt confident again. She wanted to keep going, which ensured me that she was in a good spot. Then, I said - OK, that's enough! She felt proud of herself and marched off happily. It was a great spot to quit.

I set Rain up for a hoof soak and moved on to the next task. I did a little frog maintenance, but didn't really trim her.

I rode Cowboy for Chrissy. He definitely felt softer and he definitely is understanding that it's easier to loosen up and let go of some of the brace. He's such a nice horse and when he starts to loosen up I imagine him being quite a performance horse. He's got looks, confirmation and great try. I think it helps for Chrissy to see him do so well and makes it easier for her to mount up. She also can feel the difference in his responses to her if I warm him up first. He's softer in the bit and that makes it easier for her to relax. We did more yo-yo and she started to talk a little on him. I talked her into getting off of him today when she seemed fairly confident. I hope it was the right time.

I also dewormed Cowboy, Starlet, Rain and Rio. They had positive fecal results this time. I'll retest in 4 months. Gem and Z were negative - interesting that only 2 horses would be negative. Maybe because I ride them more and their systems fight the worms better due to the high activity? I'll continue to monitor. Z and Gem haven't been dewormed in 2 years. This was Rain's and Cowboy's first time in 2 years. Rio was dewormed last fall after a high fecal count. His count was half what it was last year, but still just high enough to need a deworming. Starlet has been on daily dewormer a lot of her life, so I imagine she's still adjusting. She's been off the daily treatment since last August.

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