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.

Fabulous Weekend!

Well I didn't go riding Saturday. My oldest sister and her husband were over Friday night and I told them I was sleeping over. Hehe. They were totally fine with that. It makes me laugh. So I went to their house for the weekend and cleaned it. My sister was very happy. I got to feed baby calves. My sister went to work so I went with my brother in-law to his parent's house and his cousins were over. I now have a small collections of funny stories.
I did ride horses yesterday. I almost didn't, then Aleythia got really frustrated with her homework and practically dragged me out the door. I rode Frosty first because I knew she would be the one who would want to canter, and I couldn't do that in the barn when it got dark. She is getting neck reining down pretty well.
I got Toffy to go over some feed bags too. Which is an improvement. I even got on her bareback and did it. I also went over the bags with Dash too. And we trotted a little bit too.
It's funny I don't think of my barrel horse as short, but he really is. Next to our fillies he is really, really short.

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

I almost like riding in the winter... when it's not zero degrees.
I rode Misstack today. We had fun. I think she was just happy to be out and doing something. I tried riding her in an English saddle, and working on my two-point. One problem. It was a saddle seat, saddle. Which is completely flat and is designed to push the rider farther back into a chair seat position, and give the horse free range of his shoulders. Doing two-point is extremely difficult because there is nothing to even brace yourself against. A jumping saddle at least has a knee roll or whatever you call it. There is absolutely nothing. to. brace. against. For my purposes I shortened the stirrups. That helped. Hey, maybe I'll get even better balance because I'll have nothing to help me. I can do six steps of her trot in two-point before I lose my balance. Yay! Actually that's pathetic... I'm working on it.
Misstack had quite the lively trot going there too. I loved it! I tried to sit her trot too.... Let's just say it needs work. Lots of work.
I'll try to go riding tomorrow. And hopefully I'll have enough time to work with all of my horses. It'll be Friday!!

Winter Woes

If you're wondering about Coffie scroll down a little bit.
Not a whole lot is going on right now. We're teaching the fillies neck reining, and that's about all were focusing on right now. Wait. We are also working on getting them to go over random things. Nothing too complicated. Toffy needs the most work in that area. We're thinking that over the winter, if we are looking for something to do we'll train them further in driving. I might start doing a little work on the correct way to go around a barrel over the winter too. Though I might want them to be a little more adept at moving their hindquarters and shoulders before I do that.
It's been really cold. And we don't even have snow. Zero degrees, feels like negative eleven. If it was more mid winter, that wouldn't bother me so much, but it's still not real fun riding in that weather. The horses are getting an extended break. Though it bugs me to be inside all day. It is so boring.
I went and saw Burn'em this last week too. That filly I'm going to be training. She has a much better attitude than when I last saw her. She ran from me with the halter, but didn't start backing up when I put it on. I did a little lesson on lungeing which she is surprisingly good at. My fillies were all over the place. Not her. I also taught the girl I was with how to lunge. She'd never done it before.
They are thinking about also having me train their four year old. Not exactly sure what needs to be done with him. He apparently doesn't like people... and is afraid of brushes. I think they want him trained in barrel racing. We'll see how this all works out.

Post on Selling Coffie

Recently I put up a for sale add on craigs list for the fillies. I wrote this. "Well broke filly with a year and a half of training in western riding." My intention was to let people know what discipline of riding she was being trained in. What people thought I meant was that I had been riding them for a year and a half. They are two and a half and I got them as yearlings. They were not ridden as yearlings. For a year they had ground work 15 minutes a day. As two year olds they had very light riding. Less than 15 minutes and no hard work. I still consider their age when I do things with them. I am extremely conscious about how much I put them through and what affect it will have on their body.
I  am truly impressed though with how many people care about what happens to other people's horses. What I am not impressed with is how many people sent me hate mail. I accept constructive criticism. If you don't like how I do things tell me in a polite manner instead of sending me hate mail. Thank you to the people who asked about the post.