Post from Dragonfly

First off I am not a blogger, this is the first time Ive blogged on here about the journey I made with my equine partner Orion, who is 4 years old. I joined the RAC so I could see how much time has gone into this adventure of owning and training a young horse, and partly to keep me motivated to keep going. I have owned Orion since he was born. Had 30 days put on him in 2012 and then quickly realized how much I needed to learn to do this right. I was 3 years into riding myself and had only owned safe trail horses you could just be the passenger and they'd take care of you. After having his 30 days, he was young and looking for a leader. I wasn't really fitting into that mold very well. So then came the lessons. Every lesson, Id learn and Id teach him something new. It was going ok but we'd still have occasional train wrecks out on the trail. Then came the Fundamentals set from Clinton Anderson. We started from the disc 1 and I can say, although everyday is a work in progress, we have completed the set, Graduated!  and are going to move on to Intermediate this next year. We have had hundreds of hours this year, going on trail rides, going to lessons, going to the arena with 4h, going to clinics and even a parade. Its been an incredible journey, partnership and bonding experience. He is such an amazing horse. The greatest personality and always looking to learn something new, which he learns very quickly I might add. Here's one of my favorite photos of him from this year, on his birthday too:

I took a video today of what we did, the first part is us, bareback, bridleless, only a cordeo around his neck. I just got it in the mail, so its the first time he had this on. He did well and everything I asked. The second part is us doing leading beside, lounging for respect part 2, which we haven't done a lot of, so please excuse the fumbles here and there, it had been a while since we did it; And then circle driving which is another cool groundwork exercise. At the end he smiles for everyone, we'll work on the bow next year. 2013 has been such an incredible year for us and we both are so glad to share in this experience with other Curly owners. Its been a blessing and hope to do this again. I"ll close this blog with some more photos from the past year too:

these are from the Steve Rother Horsemanship clinic last March, we weren't even the only curly there

 And some more:

 this was from our first show together:

Part of the RAC challenge with a bike:

And heres the link for the video  : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tywaHuHBWI&feature=youtu.be