Beautiful Things

I have had the best time with my horses and other people's horses. Last Sunday Aleythia and I went to Holly's to ride and we worked on position. One of the exercises was to stand up in your stirrups above your pommel and stay there. The end goal is to be able to do that at all three gaits. It's quite the leg workout. I don't know how long I did it, but the next couple days I was really sore. Another exercise we did was to start trotting: sit two strides, post one, and repeat. Then do the opposite: sit one stride, stand for two. The third exercise was impossible. You were supposed to go into two-point and bend at the waist and try to bend to your horse's neck. I. can't. do. that. After those exercises there was an immediate difference in how secure I was in the saddle. Then I tried sitting Oly's trot... It's a work in process. Like always we did a little bit of jumping and I jumped Oly over two jumps right in a row. There is a name for it, but I don't know it. He would jump the first one and would immediately have to jump again without taking another stride. It was so much fun!!! I rode T too. Bareback. And we jumped bareback. The jump was only about two feet or so. Probably less. That was fun too.
Tuesday Aleythia and I went to ride our own horses. We only had time to ride one horse. I rode Misstack and Aleythia rode Ana. I wanted to see if Misstack would do contact... she can. She might not be real good at it, but she can definitely do it. This is what she can do. She figured it out at the end.

The walking finally clicked for Ana. It's so cool. She finally gets it. It still needs work, but she is so much better! Wednesday we discovered that she is now a Cadillac. Terry got the chiropractor to come out and he adjusted her hip. It is such an improvement in her canter. Usually her canter is jarring, hurts your back, and makes you look like a fist year rider. Now she has that canter that Terry always said she had when he was riding her. She just needs to slow it down. So here's a before and after.

before

after

Thursday I rode Santana and tried to sit it trot without stirrups.... I could. I love it!

Today we went with Holly to her dressage lesson and I realized how little I know about the position of a horse. Like dropping the shoulder, being stiff, ect. My dressage vocabulary has greatly expanded. The highlight of that was riding Rosa. She is such a powerful horse. It is so different to ride her than any horse I have ever ridden. I don't really even know how to describe it. She has the most beautiful gaits. I love that horse... who wouldn't. 

 



Please Let it Work!!!

I have the most awesome news that isn't 100% off the ground. It's more like 50%. I got asked by someone from my school if I would like to halter break and do ground work with a foal she has. Her mother trains barrel horses, and she wants someone to start her foal. I don't know if she just doesn't have time or what. So I was waiting for the bus and I walked up to this girl and the conversation went sorta like this.
"Do you know how to train horses?"
"Ya, totally."
"Do you want to halter break and do ground work with one of our horses? My mom is kinda like, 'we really  need to get someone to start this horse.'
"Heck ya."
"How much do you want to get paid?"
"Ya know I don't know. Because I am a beginner horse trainer it will be less, but I really don't know what I should ask. So ask your mom what she thinks I should get."
"Were would you train him? At our place or yours?"
"Honestly it would be so much easier to keep him at my place, but I'll have to ask Terry what he thinks about and then there's paying for feed."
"Ya, so I'll ask my mom about that."
"I'll see what Terry thinks and get back to you."
I am super excited to see how this works out, cause honestly everything is in my favor. It's a paying job. Which would be appreciated. We have an open stall because we recently lost our oldest horse, it would help me to get more motivated to get over and work with him and I would therefore work with my other horses. I feel like Terry would say that we already have too much on our plate, but I think it'll be an incentive to work more with our horses. If we add another horse to our roster of mounts we will have nine horses to ride all together. Six is usually a more common number though. We don't have to ride Strudder or Santana. So add another one and we do seven. Though this horse doesn't need to be ridden and will take less than half an hour a day.
I can't wait to do all the work we put into the fillies into that horse. I actually don't know the gender, breed, age, or anything else about this horse. I'm thinking that this horse is a little older that what he should be to be just starting on this because they really need it done. I seriously hope he isn't a stallion, but seriously doubt that would even be a possibility.
So that's my exciting news. I don't know what will happen. It's a surprising twist. It's really funny too. I'm getting a job prospect even before I will need it. God's done that to me quite a few times. When I need money, even before I know I'll need it, I get some type of job. It really is quite amazing.

Big Decision

So the second biggest decision of my life is... not here yet. This big decision is whether or not I should go to college or go apprentice with a horse trainer.
My original plan was to go to college and then apprentice. There's a problem with this.
I was talking with someone and we were talking about college and careers and debt. This person I was talking to knows a lot of people who have fancy degrees, and work in a place like McDonalds or not at all. He on the other hand didn't go to college, has no debt, and runs his own computer business. So I could either go to college first, get a degree and a lot of debt, and then apprentice, which would leave me with pretty much no way to pay off the debt, or apprentice with a well known trainer first and then go to college. I could skip college all together, but I'll worry about that when I come to it. With doing the second option I could do what I love, make a name for myself, and not have to worry about tons of debt while I was doing it. I could get a good salary and all would be just fine. If I went to college I would get a degree in the agricultural field. As far as what part of agriculture I haven't decided yet. I would like to go to college, but I don't know what I would do with the degree I would get. I want to train horses.
By the way my first big decision was and is trusting Jesus, so that's what I want to do with this decision. Trust that God has a plan for me and he'll put me where he wants me to be.

Go/Dream BIG or Go Home

First, I am totally bumbed that I haven't worked with horses sense Thursday of last week. I am feeling horse deprived. Talking about horses with somebody helps though.

Turns out my brother in law (married to my oldest sister), we'll call him N, has my whole life planned out for me.
I'll go live in Montana close to Yellowstone National Park on a ranch. He'll get an eight hitch team of Clydesdales and drive them. He doesn't want to deal with them other than driving, so I'll take care of them. He'll build my barn, bale hay, make feed, and even take out the manure. I can even have my own operation with horses in another half of the barn. I'll have a guest bedroom just for him (and his wife/my sister) and hey, I'll even label the bedroom as his.
And then we started talking about how at one time we had planned the perfect Christmas... and the Clydesdales would help with that. We would have a cabin in the middle of nowhere, hitch up the Clydesdales, and go for a sleigh ride to the cabin. (N's going to build that too). We'll invite everyone over to my place and as my youth pastor put it "We'll double the population of Montana."
The reason for living near Yellowstone is so that he can go snowmobiling there. He loves his snowmobile.
Oh, and N will build his own wagon too. And it will be big...
I love this dream. And who knows, it might just happen.

The other cause for being not so bumbed out about not working with horses sense Thursday is that we had our first official FFA meeting in our little town. It has been about 25 years sense the last one. And it is kinda awesome because the whole community came together and donated money to get the FFA program up and running.
And just so you know this is not totally unrelated to horses (I've been doing that a lot lately). The main reason I joined FFA is that it is possible that I will be able to ride in the fair under the FFA name. So, I'm kinda excited bout that.
And I also signed up to be an officer for our chapter. I am what ya call a Parliamentarian. And I am not quite sure what my duties entail right now. I plan to be one of the officers until I am no longer able to be in FFA.