I'm Not So Bad...

,I've been battling some sort of stomach flu so I haven't ridden in two days (GASP!). There is a slight twitch in my left eye, but I'm sure it will go away today when I ride one of my horses. Yesterday, I spent time convincing Z that I'm not so bad. I walked out, haltered her, treated her, then unhaltered her and walked away. She stared at me like, "Uhhh, where you goin?". I waited 30 mins then did it again. I never have any trouble catching Z, but lately I've noticed her watching the way I approach the pasture and deciding if she should stick around or not. She can tell the difference between my "I'm coming to feed you" walk and my "I'm coming to catch you" walk. So, obviously, I need to shake things up and confuse her a little. She can also tell when I'm doing my "I've just hooked on the trailer" walk. She sees me futzing with the trailer and she takes a nice liesurely stroll to the farthest spot in the pasture away from me. Cute? A little. I usually then take a deep breath with a long exhale and promise myself to do more quiet time with her.

I also spent some time with Rain. She wants to be with me more than any other horse. She loves to just hang around and will often choose me over the herd. I put Kendall on her and led her around a bit and just spent time.

Easy Does It

Today, I played with Z in the round pen. I'm really focusing on pampering her RBI ways and give her LOTS of time to respond to me. We need to develop our cantering at Liberty - she doesn't stay at a canter very well. I can't decide if it's a footing issue in my pen, which is graded downhill and excessively soft sanded on the down hill side, or if she just says "Ugh, this is dumb". I was glad to get a full lap of cantering and we will continue to develop on that.

I also started playing with getting her to do a full-turn on the rail at liberty. Once she was facing the rail in the turn, she was sure I intended for her to go sideways. It took a few times, but she started to figure out I was asking her to continue turning on the haunches until we were faced the same way again. She licked and chewed each time. I waited for it. Yay for us!

I really need to video tape some tasks and send them. Maybe I can get Steve to help me this weekend with that. Good stuff! Having fun.

The Barn Aisle, Feb 25th

Did a little bit with Rain and Zarah in the barn aisle last night. Didn't spend any horse time all day and decided to take a few mins and work on something. Rain and I worked on a lighter and lighter response to me on the stool and her swinging over for me to mount. We're getting better - no tail swishing and a very easy and close swing to me. Zarah and I worked on the bow in the stall with hay all over the ground (it was soft enough). She didn't like being in that stall and it was a little hard to get her to relax. She has the leg cue completely down and now we're working on trust as she backs on 3 legs. Very cool.