Fair is next week! I wish the fillies were a little bit further along so that they could be doing barrels, but that's okay. I'm just gunna roll with whatever they give me, and can do. I really want to do a trail class with them. But so far it looks like we'll be doing a halter class, a walk/trot pleasure class, 2 year old snaffle class, and a trail class if we can manage it.
The fillies are getting quite good at going were we tell them. Walk, trot, and canter. You would not believe Toffie's sliding stop. Gosh it's beautiful. I'll be cantering and I'll breathe out, sink into my seat, and pull lightly on the reins. She just sits right down, like nobody's business. It's not like I taught her to do that. One day I just wanted to see how fast she could slow down, and that was the result. I love it! Oh I know an exercise that will give your horse confidence, improve your balance, focuses on keeping a constant speed, and will teach your horse that going towards the gate will gain him nothing. I'll put it on my other blog. (Here's the Link) Not my idea, but it definitely works.
Besides working with the horses on the same stuff we've been working on, we gave Dash and Coffie a bath. It rained a little while ago, and it rained today, but anywho, they went rolling. Baths were definitely needed.
And we have a horse show to go to tomorrow. It'll be fun! I get to ride Santana!
Showing posts with label Fair. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fair. Show all posts
Saturday, August 10, 2013
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Jittery Bug
Yesterday. Hmm so we got there around 2:30 and then stayed inside for two hours until it cooled off a little bit. I discovered I can say "a little bit" in four different languages. I have skilzs. We talked about what we were doing with the fillies come fair time. We're thinking they'll do a western pleasure class, a trail class, and maybe a timed event. We'll take Dash and Frosty. They'll probably do a halter class too. We don't want it to be too stressful, so they'll only be there one day. So we need to sit down and plan what we need to train in the time we have. I'm smart guys. Ya know how Toffy has been landing wrong on her foot, well because of it I haven't been riding her. Or doing anything with her. Cause there's not much to do. And I just had a thought. I could do ground stuff with her. Like a tarp, getting her to pull something, ect.. Yep.
Misstack was great yesterday. She gets better every time I take her out. She was getting on her hind feet when I asked her to do a rollback off the fence, her turns are getting a whole lot cleaner. She is neck-reining half way decently too.
With Coffie I have just been working on getting her to go where I tell her, and not pop her shoulder out and run through my cues. It is something that I did not anticipate to be a big problem.
We shouldn't stay in the ring for everything we need to teach them. Some of it can be taught outside of a ring on the trail and it is more fun. It just takes up more time, but we can deal with that.
Terry wants me to do kalcuta with Santana. I probably spelled it wrong. It gives me butterflies just thinking about it. Everyone who enters gets lined up in the arena and people bid on who will win. There is one barrel. You get a running start through the gate, go down, turn the barrel, come back, and then you have to stop inside the arena. The person with the fastest time, without knocking the barrel over, wins. It's extremely stressful. I think Santana would do wonderful with it. I'm slightly worried about the running start, because usually I have to have someone lead him into the arena because he acts all jittery. It'll be fine though. I need to fix his third barrel. He anticipates the turn so he goes too early and usually ends up knocking it over. He needs to quit anticipating a turn. I'll fix it by turning him away from the barrel and circling and then go around it. I discovered riding him in a snaffle through barrels and poles does not work very well when he's hyper. It's funny when he turns that last barrel I know he's going to bolt for home. It's still a little bit of a surprise even then. When he turns that barrel you have to be hanging onto the saddle horn just to keep from flying out of the saddle because he speeds up so fast. I love it!
Misstack was great yesterday. She gets better every time I take her out. She was getting on her hind feet when I asked her to do a rollback off the fence, her turns are getting a whole lot cleaner. She is neck-reining half way decently too.
With Coffie I have just been working on getting her to go where I tell her, and not pop her shoulder out and run through my cues. It is something that I did not anticipate to be a big problem.
We shouldn't stay in the ring for everything we need to teach them. Some of it can be taught outside of a ring on the trail and it is more fun. It just takes up more time, but we can deal with that.
Terry wants me to do kalcuta with Santana. I probably spelled it wrong. It gives me butterflies just thinking about it. Everyone who enters gets lined up in the arena and people bid on who will win. There is one barrel. You get a running start through the gate, go down, turn the barrel, come back, and then you have to stop inside the arena. The person with the fastest time, without knocking the barrel over, wins. It's extremely stressful. I think Santana would do wonderful with it. I'm slightly worried about the running start, because usually I have to have someone lead him into the arena because he acts all jittery. It'll be fine though. I need to fix his third barrel. He anticipates the turn so he goes too early and usually ends up knocking it over. He needs to quit anticipating a turn. I'll fix it by turning him away from the barrel and circling and then go around it. I discovered riding him in a snaffle through barrels and poles does not work very well when he's hyper. It's funny when he turns that last barrel I know he's going to bolt for home. It's still a little bit of a surprise even then. When he turns that barrel you have to be hanging onto the saddle horn just to keep from flying out of the saddle because he speeds up so fast. I love it!
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Day 13
So once again all I did was move around on the fillies' backs. It was raining for a little while and the paddock is all slush. Not very conducive to riding horses.
Aleythia wasn't with me today so I kept the fillies tied up to the wall. It wasn't too bad. Terry gave me a leg up. They were all kinda nervous.
You should have seen them in the pasture! They were bittin each other and rearing, running each other over... it was quite entertaining.
The other thing I did today was talk to Terry about fair week.
Whether or not we should take all four, and thus have to spend around 100 dollars on coggins tests, Bring only one, or bring two.
I'm leaning towards two. The two we want to sell. Which would be Frosty and Coffie.
So Frosty is small, but she has a whole lot of curiosity and courage.
Coffie is the tallest of the four, and is the most dependable.
The other two don't have so much of either of those. Terry wants to keep them because he likes the look of them, and eventually they will turn into dependable horses.
And it just so happens that Frosty and Coffie are the two horses we will be cantering tomorrow. I can't wait for that. I don't really know how it's going to turn out, but I think it will be fine.
We went and visited Flicka and her new pasture buddy, Toot. She's a grey mare that used to be a 4-H horse. I can't remember her breed.
But we saw MD there too. She lives there. We let her know about getting the fillies to canter, so that should prove entertaining. She show up around 4 and that's when we'll start.
We need to do it now because Saturday a friend of mine is getting married, and Sunday Aleythia is leaving for camp and will be gone two weeks. I don't want to wait that long.
Oh, oh, oh! I am really excited about fair time. Frosty is going to be Terry's youngest grandson's 4-H horse in cloverbuds. It's just a halter class, and Frosty will be wonderful for him. I'll even bet that they'll get a blue ribbon. Though the entire class will either get a blue, or a red. But still.
I'm looking forward to how she'll react to the crowd. First time in the show ring handled by a six year old. Perfect.
That means that people will get to see what an awesome two year old she is, and how well she does will help to get her sold.
I know you all are probably thinking she's too young to be sold, too inexperienced. Look at it this way. Flicka was also very young, she never bucked us off because she was scared. She was a decent trail horse. We'll have a whole summer to get them a little more muscled, a little bigger, and a little more dependable. Another thing is that more than likely they will be bought by a beginner rider who is either young, or just starting riding. That being the case the young rider will probably not ride very long or do anything really stressful, and the just starting rider will probably not do anything stressful either... And it'll be right before winter, which means they won't get ridden very long because of the cold. I'm slightly worried that they won't get ridden at all, but we'll just have to worry about that when we come to it.
Aleythia wasn't with me today so I kept the fillies tied up to the wall. It wasn't too bad. Terry gave me a leg up. They were all kinda nervous.
You should have seen them in the pasture! They were bittin each other and rearing, running each other over... it was quite entertaining.
The other thing I did today was talk to Terry about fair week.
Whether or not we should take all four, and thus have to spend around 100 dollars on coggins tests, Bring only one, or bring two.
I'm leaning towards two. The two we want to sell. Which would be Frosty and Coffie.
So Frosty is small, but she has a whole lot of curiosity and courage.
Coffie is the tallest of the four, and is the most dependable.
The other two don't have so much of either of those. Terry wants to keep them because he likes the look of them, and eventually they will turn into dependable horses.
And it just so happens that Frosty and Coffie are the two horses we will be cantering tomorrow. I can't wait for that. I don't really know how it's going to turn out, but I think it will be fine.
We went and visited Flicka and her new pasture buddy, Toot. She's a grey mare that used to be a 4-H horse. I can't remember her breed.
But we saw MD there too. She lives there. We let her know about getting the fillies to canter, so that should prove entertaining. She show up around 4 and that's when we'll start.
We need to do it now because Saturday a friend of mine is getting married, and Sunday Aleythia is leaving for camp and will be gone two weeks. I don't want to wait that long.
Oh, oh, oh! I am really excited about fair time. Frosty is going to be Terry's youngest grandson's 4-H horse in cloverbuds. It's just a halter class, and Frosty will be wonderful for him. I'll even bet that they'll get a blue ribbon. Though the entire class will either get a blue, or a red. But still.
I'm looking forward to how she'll react to the crowd. First time in the show ring handled by a six year old. Perfect.
That means that people will get to see what an awesome two year old she is, and how well she does will help to get her sold.
I know you all are probably thinking she's too young to be sold, too inexperienced. Look at it this way. Flicka was also very young, she never bucked us off because she was scared. She was a decent trail horse. We'll have a whole summer to get them a little more muscled, a little bigger, and a little more dependable. Another thing is that more than likely they will be bought by a beginner rider who is either young, or just starting riding. That being the case the young rider will probably not ride very long or do anything really stressful, and the just starting rider will probably not do anything stressful either... And it'll be right before winter, which means they won't get ridden very long because of the cold. I'm slightly worried that they won't get ridden at all, but we'll just have to worry about that when we come to it.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Happily Over
Well, the fair is over. It was fun though! Santana and I placed in everything we did. No firsts and no fourths, but second, third, and fifth... yes. I can't even remember what placing went with what show. I do have videos of every run and I'll put those up with different posts, but here's one.
While I was standing next to the fence in the arena after a run, a guy came up to me and said to me "The real question is why do you hang onto his mane instead of the saddle horn?" and I was like "I do?" And then I said I would have to look at the videos Aleythia took. I looked at it and sure enough right before I told Santana to run I switched my hand from the saddle horn to his mane. I hadn't even realized I did it.
Misstack and Blacky showed too. We decided that we would no longer do jumping figure eight with Blacky because her arthritis is so bad. Misstack was doing a little better Sunday, she did canter through some of the pattern.
Misstack and Blacky showed too. We decided that we would no longer do jumping figure eight with Blacky because her arthritis is so bad. Misstack was doing a little better Sunday, she did canter through some of the pattern.
Filly Update
They are all doing quite well. And, I layed over Frosty. She was pretty good. She did get scared a bit when I was moving around and tried running away, but she was really good! Yesterday, I took out a saddle blanket and got Coffie desensitized to it. She was scared of it for the first little bit, but I can now rub her with it anywhere and she will completely ignore it. Dash is getting a little bit lazy. She was good at leading, but yesterday she refused to lead. So, I remedied her leading problem by lungeing her a bit. I had her walk in a circle around me without stopping and then I did some trotting. Aleythia reviewed laying on Frosty's back.
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Ups, Downs, and All Around
This is of me doing jumping figure eight with Santana. I kept losing my stirrups and we were gunna use rubber bands to help me keep the stirrups but we forgot. Another problem was that I haven't cantered him in this pattern before, just trotted (I couldn't get him to canter). The reason I fell of was because I didn't decide right away which direction we were gunna go so Santana decided for me and then I decided... so, he went one way and I went the other. After I fell off I got up and Santana spooks a little and you've got to turn the volume up because a lady next to Aleythia talks to Santana all the way across the arena. You'll have to listen really carefully, it's kinda quiet. She says, "It's okay horsy, it's okay, she's not mad." The one thing I liked though was that he turned towards me after I fell off. I've seen a lot of horses run after unseating a rider.
I knocked in poles because I also lost my stirrup when he turned the last pole, and was hanging on for dear life so I wasn't guiding him through the poles, so he finished the pattern up by himself and we knocked over a pole, but I did manage to stay on. If I hadn't lost my stirrup I would have won first place by a hundredth of a second. I got fifth place in barrels, and my dad said that it looked really good.
pictures!
I'm so fast I'm bluring
I hate my position
He's standing still!
The Beginning
Here we Go!
Saturday, August 11, 2012
There's Always Room for Improvement
Well, I have a show tomorrow. Even though it's on Sunday.
I rode Santana and gave him a bath.
That sounds like he did perfect... no, he was a pain. So instead of picturing him standing still and enjoying a bath, picture him trying to avoid the water by going in circles around me.
Before that I rode Ana. Well, Aleythia rode Ana, but she thought something was wrong with Ana, because when we cinched her up she layed her ears back and threw her head up, and when Aleythia was moving around in the saddle she also layed her ears back and threw her head up. She was also being a general pain. So, I got on her and got her to walk, and then checked out her trot. I didn't find any problems there except she pinned her ears back when I asked for the trot
We decided that Ana just doesn't have respect for Aleythia so she tries to get away with all these little things.
Guess what I did yesterday?
I rode Ana bareback!
This actually isn't anything new, but it was a lot of fun. This last winter I figured out how to sit her trot, so it is actually fun riding bareback. I figured out that if I leaned forward in the slightest I couldn't stay on, but if I sat on my jean pockets and made sure to not lean forward, just go with the motion and not tense up, I could ride the fastest trot she had. Oh, and we are in the process of teaching her how to side pass. Surprisingly she can do it quite well. She can't side pass the length of the paddock but she can do it for a couple steps. She gets the concept. I also taught her how to flex at the poll. Now when we are walking or trotting whenever her head is too high and she's going too fast I can get her to flex at the poll, and it calms her down a little bit. Ana has gotten a lot better with how responsive she is and how hyper. I have a photo of her from maybe three or four years ago and Aleythia is riding her. So, you have this little kid trying to get this really hyper horse to slow down and the kid isn't relaxed at all. I'll have to put it up here one of these days. I have a few progress photos of Ana. The one just described, one taken maybe last year, and one of the pictures above. There is a distinct improvement. The reason it has taken us so long to get her to calm down is in part because that's just her character (she's one quarter arabian and three quarters saddlebred for goodness sake!) and also because we really didn't know what to do about it before this year.
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Fair Week is Almost Here
I am looking forward to the fair. I love the smell of the fair, the most prominent being the smell of onion rings. I love watching all the shows. The show with all these draft horses pulling wagons and the mule shows. I love to help out for a day at my grade school's food stand, and how busy it gets when all the people who set up the rides come in for supper. And I love showing. It is a lot of fun. The fair is less than two weeks away, and I'm still getting the kinks out of my horse.
First off, is that he gets way too hyper running those games, so that when I turn him towards the poles or barrels he takes off. I don't want that. I want him to go when I tell him to not like someone lit his tail on fire. He is now pretty good at waiting for my cue to go. What I did was every time he took off I would turn him and make him go back to the start. It takes a while, but he eventually gets it. I also would turn him and make him disengage his hindquarters then go back to the start. He also likes to take short cuts. So, when where running the poles he cuts as close as he possibly can and my knee ends up knocking it over, and I can't turn him away because he is a hot head and doesn't want to be uninterrupted while he's running. But, I am working on it. Every time he tries to turn the pole on his own accord I would turn him away from it. Where he wants to go I go the opposite. It's a work in progress.
Today with the fillies while I was riding Santana Aleythia worked with Coffie and Dash. She told me that they are just not getting the point of flexing. She also worked on picking up their feet. When I was done with Santana, she rode Ana and I worked with Toffy and Frosty. They get flexing down pretty good. I found that the longer I rewarded them with rubbing them, the longer it took them to consistently turn their head towards me. The release of the pressure of the halter is the reward so you don't have to spend five minutes rubbing them. It seems that the longer I waited they seemed to forget what I was rewarding them for. I also worked on ground tying.
First off, is that he gets way too hyper running those games, so that when I turn him towards the poles or barrels he takes off. I don't want that. I want him to go when I tell him to not like someone lit his tail on fire. He is now pretty good at waiting for my cue to go. What I did was every time he took off I would turn him and make him go back to the start. It takes a while, but he eventually gets it. I also would turn him and make him disengage his hindquarters then go back to the start. He also likes to take short cuts. So, when where running the poles he cuts as close as he possibly can and my knee ends up knocking it over, and I can't turn him away because he is a hot head and doesn't want to be uninterrupted while he's running. But, I am working on it. Every time he tries to turn the pole on his own accord I would turn him away from it. Where he wants to go I go the opposite. It's a work in progress.
Today with the fillies while I was riding Santana Aleythia worked with Coffie and Dash. She told me that they are just not getting the point of flexing. She also worked on picking up their feet. When I was done with Santana, she rode Ana and I worked with Toffy and Frosty. They get flexing down pretty good. I found that the longer I rewarded them with rubbing them, the longer it took them to consistently turn their head towards me. The release of the pressure of the halter is the reward so you don't have to spend five minutes rubbing them. It seems that the longer I waited they seemed to forget what I was rewarding them for. I also worked on ground tying.
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