Lesson Day

This week's lesson day was much more pleasant than last! 

Nu-nu thinks so, too

It was in the 50's again, sunny and almost no wind.  Instead of trying not to blow away and scooting away from plastic monsters, I was pushing up my sleeves and Sunny was actually sweating.

I tacked up - sans spurs - and had the arena to myself for about 15 minutes while Eric put away the horse he'd been working with when I got there and collected his next victim.  (I don't mind at all if he rides while he teaches.  It's really helpful to be able to have a visual demonstration when I'm not getting the hang of something.)  His mount this time was a finished reiner, so he showed me some slides, as well - bonus! :)

This time he had me go straight from warming up into a series of really round figure eights, loose rein, just picking up the inside rein and cuing bend with my legs.  Good practice finding my diagonals, and the beginning of working toward asking for flying lead changes.  But for now, just working on even, round circles and proper bend without either of us dropping our shoulders.

Gradually he had me ask for more collection - I can definitely feel that Sunny's getting lighter on his front end and being able to carry himself in a more balanced way.  Practicing with spurs did help - but I didn't miss them during the lesson at all except for canter right.  Eh... straggly, rough, and stiff - he wanted to canter completely flat, stick his nose to the outside, and turn his body into a board.  But we worked through it and eventually managed a not-completely-sucky departure and decent downward transition when I asked for it as opposed to when he wanted to slow down. 

We finished by working some more on half-passing, and a revisit to that exercise Eric showed me a couple of weeks ago.  The one where I ask him to spiral in until he's sort of snail-shaped, then unwind him by rocking him from the forehand to a reverse spiral on the haunches and out- which makes about as much sense when I try to explain it as it was when I tried to ask Sunny to do it.  With some coaching as to hand was "inside" and therefore needed to be raised and which heel I needed to be pushing which hip over with, Sunny was doing the whole thing beautifully.  Which was fabulous - but when I tried to do it by myself today, dyslexia kicked in again and I'm all muddled.  I can tell he's trying to do what I'm asking for - it's just that I'm not asking him right.  Sigh...

Anyway, it was chilly and getting along to dark by the time I managed to get him dry enough to put in the trailer - of course the cooler I ordered arrived today.  But I'm sure there'll be plenty more opportunities to use it before winter kicks in.

Homework:  Trotting lots of big round figure-eights.  No cutting across on the diagonals, he wants two ROUND circles stuck together.  Spiral in and outs, and more side-passing along the fence.  (I don't think he trusts me to work on half-passing without him there to coach me on right/left bend - can't say I blame him!)

It was a great lesson, but the most exciting moment of the day?  Turning the last corner half a mile from the farm and hearing this completely awful, horrible, no-good, very bad screeching noise start behind me.  I was going really slowly anyway, so I tapped the brakes to see if something was sticking and I could unstick it.  No dice.  Movement = squealing.  I stopped completely, put it in park and made a quick loop around - other than the boys shifting around, no tires hot, low or smoking....


I could see headlights coming, so not being parked in the middle of the road seemed like a good idea. I was actually on the phone (bluetooth earpiece - love that handsfree!) with my mom.  She called to my dad to pick up the extension - he's the go-to guy in the family when anything starts making scary noises.  The consensus was since nothing seemed to be visibly wrong and I had less than a 1/4 mile to go, I might as well get there, get the horses unloaded and then try to figure out the shrieking. 

The boys didn't seem to be unduly alarmed which was good, so I got them unloaded and tucked up for the night.  Re-checked tires, etc.  Still nothing hot or smoking, and nothing loose or wiggly.  It really sounded like brakes - the engine sounded fine until I put it in drive and took my foot off the brake.  SCHREEAAK-sqeeeSSShriek.  But impossible to tell from the cab if it was the truck or trailer making the noise.  The advice from several states away was try reverse - lo and behold, no noise going backwards.  And when I put it in drive again, silence - or at least normal noise, no squealing.  The most likely explanation was a rock wedged somewhere it wasn't supposed to be - that corner is really washboarded, and it would be easy to kick something up.  No shrieking all the way home, and no weird noises today, either, so hopefully that's all it was.  Sure did wake me up, though!

The grass is green

Hooves are done - finally. Shots and worming are on the dance card. This weekend we have rain.

The horses were settled in with their backs to the wind and not at all willing to turn to face it up at the long feeder. I of course managed to pick the wettest time of day to feed them, so I ended up soaked and dripping.
Wind out of the south east is the one direction that there isn't a lot of shelter for them at the lower end of the lot. The sillies wouldn't go up to the top where they'd be behind the cedar trees and the house. At least it was a warm rain.

Nu-nu cat is settling in well. She's claimed the back of one couch for her afternoon naps and seems quite content here.

Absenteeism

You know what they say about time? Well all of it's true! For some reason last month just vanished. I've been a bad blog parent.... So here's what's been doing lately:


The ponies are fine - as you can see the pastures are starting to green up.

But at the moment everything's still pretty wet, so they're locked in the lot eating their heads off and looking longingly out at the new grass.

No riding yet, although I'm crossing my fingers for this weekend.

We hit the SD Horse Fair in Sioux Falls mid-March. Very disappointing turn-out horse-wise. In past years there've been horses wall to wall. This year there might have been maybetwenty? Five or so Arabs, a pony, a couple of POAs, a couple of Morgans, four or five QH studs & a couple of paints. I'm sure there were lots of horses there for the ranch rodeo on Saturday evening, but had to feed, so we didn't stay. It was mostly vendors. And the one horse clinician I did get to see spent a lot of time trying to sell his stuff. Although the lady with the sheep herding dogs was cool to watch.

Spring cleaning took up another weekend - 'nuf said on that front. Ugh.

We spent Easter with T's relatives in Kansas. It was a beautiful drive - and you know that green horse post? Scroll down if you missed it. Well, we actually passed a truly green horse (the color, not the state!) out in a field somewhere slightly north of Spencer, Nebraska.

I suspect someone got a wild hair for St. Patrick's Day, because they had a couple of solid color horses, and then one a lovely shade of Mt. Dew bottle green that was slowly fading back to its natural white. I meant to take a picture on the way back, but we ended up coming up a different route, so I missed my chance.

Otherwise the trip was uneventful. T tried out his new fly fishing rod. (I napped in the car, which was nice and warm - it was a wee bit chilly outside and I was feeling lazy.)


One of T's sisters made a giant bunny cake - it got decapitated and mostly consumed before I managed to get a picture, but it was impressive (and tasty!).

The kids all declared themselves too old to want to hunt Easter eggs, so we deviled the hard-boiled ones, played a lot of cards, napped, yakked and generally relaxed. And of course ate way too much.

Sunday this came home with us.

That's where she started the trip, anyway. She wasn't thrilled to be in the crate, but she wasn't too vocal about it. There was the occasional plaintive "meReOw" from the back seat, but I've ridden with worse.

We found an open Family Dollar somewhere in northern KS - I thought we'd have no trouble locating a harness and leash (that's how Mabel made the trip) to stick on her in case she tried escaping, but no luck.
What we ended up with was a cat collar, a small, buckle dog collar (you can't see it, because it's buried in fur, but it's just behind her front legs) and a flexi-lead. Run the clip on the flexi through the ring on the dog collar and snap it to the ring on the cat collar, and Presto! cat harness.

Meet Nu-Nu

(I was told she was named after
a cat character in a children's book...
Being curious, I attempted to locate it.
Ummm - well, let's just say if anyone knows
what the book is I'd be happy to hear it,
because what I did manage to find
wasn't exactly children's material.
Maybe I'm spelling it wrong?)

Being strictly an indoor kitty - she's absolutely terrified outside - she had no interest in leaving the car, but better safe than sorry. She spent the rest of the trip on either my lap or T's, depending who was driving.

And that's the news for now.