What a good boy he is :)

Well, I feel a bit badly that no one has posted since my post yesterday - and I wasn't going to say anything, but I waited and no one else posted today so I thought in the interest of keeping the blog going that I would write about my day today.  For those of you who are sick of seeing so many posts from me.... I will be taking tomorrow off from horses, so I won't be blogging.....

First I did something new - I took *Tessa and *Serenade to the indoor arena, but I took them both at the same time.  You see, the indoor arena is right next door to me (literally) but we live in a very hilly area and even though I think it is quite hilarious that it is uphill both ways to the arena (down my road and up their driveway) it can get quite exhausting going over there two or three times per day with different horses.  So today I saddled up both of these girls, hopped on Tessa and ponied Serenade over there.  Now, Tessa has never ponied a horse before and Serenade has never been ponied - but they were both very good!  Tessa is still a bit spooked about going off the property, but she behaved herself and Serenade was exceptionally good - I know she was wondering what all the snorting from Tessa was about though!

I took the camera with me to show you all what my neighbour's wonderful Coverall arena looks like - these first pictures are of Tessa lunging before I rode her.

She was pretty good - lunged very well today, and I also rode her and she was pretty good, but still a bundle of nerves - improving though I think.

This first picture is of Serenade learning to be patient while I worked with Tessa.  Serenade did try a few things to get away from her waiting spot, but after a while figured out that she was stuck there and settled down to wait.



This second one is of her lunging - she has improved SO much - I think her gait is almost normal now - next time I am going to try to get some video of her, I know that Anastasia will want to see how well Serenade is doing and I will share it with you all.  She is starting to frame up a bit and lift her back, which is great and something she needs to do before we ride her.  I measured her today - she is (surprisingly) just a tiny bit shy of 14.3hh, which I thought she was a couple of inches smaller than that, but she is still young and not mature yet, so she will get bigger as well as a little taller over the next couple of years.  We did lots of transitions, and some extended trotting and a bit of canter.  I use sidereins when I lunge, but I rarely make them very tight - I want the horse to lift their back and stretch their topline into the bit, you can see both of these horses doing this.

So then I brought these two home and had lunch :)

(Here is the good boy part)

I was determined to ride Joe again today - yesterday was a difficult day for him and even though we had ended our ride on a good note, I just knew he was still distraught and I wanted a nice quiet ride at home today and that is just exactly what we had.  I lunged him for just a short time and then I got on and he was just such a good boy today - soft and responsive and we did quite a bit of slow work, both walk and trot (this is a biggy for him - very tough!) and I finally was able to get him to stretch his topline and reach his head down a bit while I was riding him.  This is a big deal for him - he can barely trust himself to hold it together, let alone me not keeping him together by holding his mouth.  We had one "spook" when my barn cat showed up unexpectedly (I think he does it on purpose, to help me train the horses lol) and so Joe did a spook, but he was able to control himself after just a few steps - I was SO proud of him!  Then he kept a close eye on the cat but didn't spook at it again!  Anyway, I was very glad that I rode him again today - it was real progress!

Finally, I have to say a couple of words about Flame - I am taking her for walks these past few days and she has been really good.  Tonight on our way out it was dusk and when we rounded the corner where the road narrows, there was "something" biggish in the bush and Flame jumped back to the end of her slack in the lead rope, let out a huge snort and then came right forward with me again - this bodes very well for when I am riding her!  So we walked forward and it turned out to be the other neigbour's blue heeler dog and it was in the bushes eating a fairly freshly killed deer!  So it was a legitimate spook and yet Flame overcame it very well - what a good girl!

So that is it for me for now - come on everyone else - whatcha all been up to?
Shelly in Summerland, BC Canada
http://www.curlystandardplace.com