Things to Work On

Today my sister, Aleythia, and I went to the horse barn and for the first half hour we just hung out with the horses in the barn. Have you ever noticed that when you show dominance over one horse that horse has to go show its dominance to another, and it continues down the line.

 It was kinda hot today, but we did have a wind. We went inside, had an ice cream cone, and tried drawing a porch. The owner, Terry, wanted us to try and draw this porch his daughter was going to put up so he could send it to someone so that they knew what she wanted. It wasn't too bad. After deciding that we were gaining nothing by staying inside we went out to the barn.

I rode Misstack, and Aleythia rode Ana. I worked on getting Misstack to listen to me for the change of direction, and you would be amazed how little it takes her to turn...,  except when she's doing the barrel pattern. For some reason when I ask her to turn that first barrel it is really hard to do. She tries to take the widest turn possible, and then when she exits the barrel she starts leaping into the air. Not technically bucking, but it is not at all comfortable to ride. Terry thinks that if she didn't take so wide a turn she wouldn't be able to leap into the air. Leaping into the air like that slows her down way to much. I need to find a way to fix it. Aleythia suggested that I get her to swing her hindquarters around the barrel. So what I would be doing is pressing my inside leg against her to get her hindquarters to almost walk around her front during the turn. I now have to work on getting Misstack to move her hindquarters while I'm in the saddle. She does do it a little, but it takes a little bit of kicking to do it. At least I have a place to start.

Aleythia was working on getting Ana to walk nicely. Aleythia said she's awesome at it, but she just doesn't think Ana is ready to progress to the trot. She says that Ana still doesn't have that hesitant step when she's walking. Aleythia also tried to get Ana to plant her back feet and move her front. It didn't work too well. We decided that instead of telling Ana to move her shoulder away from us in one full circle over and over, we would work on one step at a time. She has her hindquarters still for the first step, then looses it. We just have to do it really slowly, with a pause between each step.

Overall, today was a good day.