Catching up

Tina - Friendly game (lots) and practicing yeilding to the halter. Wore a bit for the first time. trotting. disengage the hind, move the fore. sideways on the ground. Huge progress. She's getting more and more comfortable with her tasks.

Nina - easy ground work! sideways coming nicely, maintain gait on the circle, great responses after a few weeks off. Easy saddling, wore the bit. lat flexion is beautiful and soft. Time for a bit. Rode in round pen, moved to big arena and did figure 8's around the barrels. Softened turns, back up, trapsing through chest high snow and wet melting snow puddles. She did beautifully!!

Rain - pulled KK around the front on the sled, all speeds. KK giggling behind as we cantered over fresh snow. Fun! Then, KK hopped on Rain behind me, held me waist and we rode around together. We found a big snow drift and she jumped off rain and landed in the snow on her back and went straight to making a snow angel. Pretty cute.

Gemini - I ran out of time. I was ready to play with him, but the had to go. So took a few minutes and started teaching him to smile. Showed Chrissy how that trick is taught. He was learning it pretty quickly! Cute.

Chrissy - she did some nice figure 8's with Cowboy and some zone 2/3 driving. Then, she tacked him up and decided to just sit on his back. Cowboy was nice and calm for her. I led them around for a bit then she hopped off. She just needs to take things slow.

Zarah - hurt again. I'm moving her into either a smaller herd or living in a stall/run for a while. Not sure what's going on with her but she keeps getting hurt. She put a healthy gash in her face - looks like a kick to the mouth. Poor girl.

Snow, snow, SNOW!!

Managing 8 in this blizzard is a little rough! :-) I will be better setup for the next winter storm. We have about 20" in total, though it's tough to tell because the snow drifts are insanely high. Some of the drifts are 4 feet! The horses have been locked away and they are all starting to look at me a little sideways. They want OUT!

The storm is coming to an end tonight so I let them all out and fed the hay on the snow drifts. I hope they stay warm enough as their winter coats aren't fully in and only a few really warrant blankets (Abby, Tina, Zarah). Most of the herd is pretty hardy in the cold as long as there's hay.

Tomorrow I'll get Rain out to pull the kids in the snow and then maybe Z, too. The kids love that.

I'm dying for horse time. Seriously, been a sorry 8 or 9 days with weather and travel. My mind is turning over all the things I want to accomplish when I can get back to it. Hopefully tomorrow will work.

Quick ride with Z

Had a short amount of time after work to hop on a horse and I chose my main mare, Z. A blizzard was moving in and I knew I'd be struggling to ride for a day or two, so I wanted some quick and satisfying riding. Z was happy to oblige! She can be moody and cranky some days and cheerful and accomodating on others. Today was the latter.

We warmed up and then I tried to jump the barrels with her. She was giving me nose and neck, but not the feet. No worries, we went for smaller jumping. Then, we opened the gate together (we've gotten pretty good at that) - keeping constant contact on the gate at all times.

Then, some patterns (figure 8, question box) followed by some lead change practice with canter departs from the halt. We finished with halp-passing and sideways. She felt really great- responsive, happy, engaged, and eager to please.

We practiced the gate some more before going in. I got her feet trimmed and her left fore has a little wall separation which is interesting since she hasn't had a long wall or a lot of flare. I'll keep my eye on it.

A nice night with my mare!