Yay for *Tessa!

Well, I only spent a short time with Tessa today - but I am determined to give her more of my attention and "take the time it takes" to regain her trust and confidence that seems to have be missing at this time.

One thing that I will say about riding endurance - which includes the conditioning rides which are, by necessity, fast rides - is that the horses learn to go fast and for most horses being fast and very FIT makes them a bit edgy - and believe me, this means Curlies too!  Believe it or not our calm, poke along Curlies can also get that competitive mindset and want to "go".  My goal though is to have the best of both - a calm, safe, fun riding horse for the trails that can easily shift gears and become a competitive endurance horse.  I do believe it is possible and I also believe that Tessa can be that horse - I know this as she has done it well in the past and I will work towards regaining it!

So, having said that, I didn't have time to ride her today so I just brought her out for a short bit of ground work, put her on the lunge line and lunged her at a walk and a bit of trot in the corner of our arena that she is having the most issues with - that would be the area with trees and a (dreaded) tarp lurking there.  So she was nervous but I have to say that Tessa is very very obedient so she held it together and made it through there several times walking, trotting and halting right by the tarp - she even gave the tarp a good sniff a few times and that was good. 

Next, I pulled the tarp into the arena and she had a really good eyeball at it then - but she remembered all the training that I have done in the past - that is if she holds her position the "scary" thing will stop moving.  It only took about 2 minutes and she was happily allowing me to put the tarp on her and walk her around with it tarp on her.  She was a good girl, licking and chewing and as calm as she gets - which was great.  I was pretty happy with her and that was all I had time for today.

Now I am going to blog about something else that is related to Curlies but not actually about working with or riding them - well, maybe a bit.... so hopefully I am not too off topic.

I used to own a pony (not a Curly) that I bought at auction - she had been in an accident, but completely healed and was sound.  I trained her to ride and I bred her to Sandman - she had a lovely foal that I named *Shesa Magic Charm.  Now, *Charm is now an adult mare and I bred her to my pony stallion *Bobble Head and a week ago *Charm gave birth to a wonderful, apricot dun s/c Curly filly that I have called *Ballet Dancer.  I guess this is somewhat related to RAC as I have been working daily with *Ballet - teaching her basic stuff and getting her gentle - well that is sort of a joke as she is the friendliest foal we have ever had born her!  Here are a couple of pictures of her:

So, further to this "story" is that the Grand-dam of this filly is the pony mare that I got at auction all those years ago and she is back at my place for a bit of a tune up, her name is Absolutely Charming - of course she is not a Curly, but she is certainly a darling and I have been riding her every day.  She will be going home soon, but it has been very cool to have her here and three generations together, she was here when *Ballet was born!

 So I really hope this hasn't been too off topic, but in my defense :)  I wanted to say that we should always remember that our Curlies are a virtual melting pot - they come from all sorts of backgrounds and in this case I have two wonderful Curlies that are descendants of this little mare I rescued from auction.
Shelly in Summerland, BC Canada