Growing Up

I am really proud of the fillies right now. Neck reigning is coming along very nicely, we are teaching them to sidepass and they're getting it, their canter circles are getting better, and their stops are getting better too. I have had a very successful week with them. Aleythia and I have also started them on the pole and barrel pattern. It's really fun. Mostly for me. I don't think they like the arena very much. I'm thinkin we'll go trail riding today.
I rode Misstack bareback yesterday. That was fun. I even cantered through poles. I didn't try that around barrels. When she canters around barrels it gets a little rocky. Which probably means I should fix it....
I really need to put pictures up. The fillies have grown so much!

I'm Back

whoops I forgot to publish this. This is from about three weeks ago.

Hello. Just wanted to let you all know that I haven't gone off the grid or something. I've been a little busy with school and haven't had a whole lot of time to go riding. It's really disappointing. But school's ended and I'm gunna have so much fun with my horses this summer. You should see those adorable little fillies. They are three now and have grown so much. I rode today which was really fun. We are working on circles, perfecting turning, perfecting stopping, and neck reigning. Tip for you all. Start teaching a young horse how to neck reign right away. It will make your life so much easier. Now I have to teach them an entirely different way of responding to the bit. But they are getting better. We discovered today that the fillies don't know how to do free longeing. Which is really weird. They always turn away instead of turning towards us.
Aleythia rode Misstack today. She wanted to try cantering with Misstack to see if she could fix her position on a horse that loves to canter.
What really stinks though is that we are leaving for Tennessee this Sunday. I'm really excited to go, but I don't want to not be riding for the two weeks that we'll be gone.
Gotta go. I'll write later.

Poor Little Snowman

Let's see. It's been a little while. The weather has been awful, and that makes it really hard to ride. We had one really nice 40 degree day a couple weeks ago and Aleythia and I went and made a snowman in the paddock, just to see what the horses would do. Ana decided his head didn't look good that way and started to eat it. I have pictures, but I'm too lazy to get them on the computer. The horses all crowded around it and one of the fillies decided it would make a good hoof rester. Ya Mr. snowman was dead in twenty minutes. And we went a couple more times in the last few weeks, but I can't remember those.  Saturday we rode! We are working with Ana on something. Ana responds really well to voice and body language. The two combined can usually get a result, but it's mostly just voice. So Aleythia has been lungeing her and telling her in a really slow calm voice "slow walk" or "slow trot" and then uses a different voice to see if she can't get her to go faster too. Saturday Aleythia rode and I lunged. It was amazing. Ana is brilliant. We could get her to do these slow mincing little steps at the walk. Trotting was a little harder because when we tell her to slow down she wanted to go back to the walk, but she did definitely go slower. It's a huge improvement. The fillies are doing good. They are just getting so big! We aren't doing a whole lot with them. Right now all we really want them to learn is neck reigning. If it was warmer I would be doing tons of trail rides, but it's no fun when it's always below ten degrees.
Ya know what's the problem with growing horses? Saddles don't fit! It helps to shimmy them up with like a towel or something in the front, but sometimes it doesn't work. Especially with Frosty. Aleythia was riding and the saddle pretty much slipped forward on to Frosty's neck. She didn't like that and bucked. So I think that until she levels out we're just going to ride her bareback.
Sunday we went to Holly's and rode her horses. I rode Olly bareback! It was so much fun! I think I have better balance when I'm bareback because I don't have the saddle to rely on. We did trotting, and cantering, and even a little jumping. He was such a good boy. Holly thinks he moves better without a saddle. I rode him for two hours, bouncy trot and all. I. am. sore.  And to top it all off he has a pointy back. That started to hurt after two hours. Whenever I go to Holly's my goal is to get sore. It means I'm actually doing something. I'm working on muscles I don't normally get a chance to work on because I'm training. It's nice not to have to train and just concentrate on your own riding.