Fear! Fire! Foes! Nevermind.

Work: AM easy walk (even for us), PM ground exercises
Grade:

Rodney and I are back to work, making progress at the speed of stalactite formation.  In rereading the blog, I realized that last Tuesday was only his fourth afternoon session since our restart. It doesn’t matter how inexplicable I find his fears. The gremlins are real to him & they’re not going away quickly.

Meanwhile, when my husband Greg served the evening meal last night, his arthritic, geriatric mare refused to eat. Wouldn’t touch her food. Wouldn’t touch her hay. For her, this is DefCon1. Alert the man with the backhoe. First order of business was to get her dinner out of the field so Rodney wouldn’t steal a second dinner during diagnosis. As Greg lifted the bucket, he realized that it was full of horse poop. She wouldn’t eat her grain for obvious reasons. She wouldn’t eat her hay because she ate her grain first, thank you very much, and would someone from room service please come clean up this mess so that she could eat her dinner?  It took a while for his pulse to stop redlining.

What was your most recent equine false alarm?

[Thanks to my Anonymous Critic for the idea to go graphic and to ClipartPal for the art.]

Peace Horse

(Apologies for the inadvertent preview this morning.)

Work: 1/2+1/2x, heat therapy/groom
Grade: n/a

Not gonna see War Horse. I have enough issues with separation as is. Watching an entire movie on the subject is not my ideal afternoon. Plus, if I want to invite the devastation of war into my life, I’ll watch the news. Instead, allow me to offer what other folks have said. Warning, it was not a happy time, so discussions of same may not lead to happy dreams. Bob’s movie review.  Sharon’s statuary commentary. Fran’s hoof level POV. If you want a fun horse movie, I recommend Sylvester. Gotta love watching The Gray Goose galloping around in the KY sunshine.

What is your favorite horse movie?

Resuming the doom spiral.

Work: 1/2x heat therapy only
Grade: n/a

Our pattern is to groom before the afternoon session. On Tuesday, he was grazing next to the ring. It seemed silly to bring him into the barn just to turn around and come back. So I haltered & went directly to what passes for work. Mistake. Despite the fact that he was 10′ from where he had been grazing, that the mare was in the ring with him, and that the “work” consisted of wandering about at the walk, he – as my grandmother used to say – had a fit and stepped in it. He started to pull, rush, toss his head & generally demonstrate protomeltdown. When I let him go, he galloped back to the barn as fast as his hooves would carry him. This lack of a hint of a sign of a shadow of progress cast me once more into the wallows of despair. We are sticking with heating pad sessions, which generally put us back in charity with one another.

I am waiting until I find the enthusiasm to try again. So far I always do. At what point does this go from admirable to idiotic?

Happy Kid on a Happy Pony

Pony Club is requesting free advertising.

Which I am happy to give….
I am a graduate B from Potomac PC in Maryland & Upper Valley PC in Vermont, plus, when I didn’t duck too fast, DC of Potomac. I still use things I learned in PC. Every rider should start in Pony Club, at least thru C-2. Every graduate A that I have met, I would trust with my horse. As a DC, I saw kids blossom under the no-adult, teamwork barn rules.

….for a price.
In return for the space, the snark. Not all was sweetness and light. I wish the horse world was more integrated. I saw too many outside trainers who resented their students’s PC activities, and vice versa. PC should be a base for all riding, not a USPC ghetto.  Also, several times I ran afoul of the PC Powers That Be. I found they took themselves too seriously. History does not record what they thought of me. Well, in at least one place it does, but I ain’t telling.

Work: day off.

What is your fondest Pony Club memory?

Boredom & Temptation

It is hard not to want to push the envelope, particularly when we are doing SO little. I think that in the past, people have seen a big horse and assumed a tough horse. In truth, he’s a cupcake. I find that he gets nervous & upset if he thinks that the work is going to be difficult or that he won’t understand. I’m trying to convince him that work can be easy. Really easy. Really, really easy.

What is your current riding temptation?

Work: walk/ground ex
Grade: gold star/bad day – apparently I am not convincing him of the above.

[A belated thank you to Writing From the Right Side of the Stall for the title. I got so excited about my initial posts that I forgot this.]

Ground Exercise 2: Crossrail

Walk quietly, calmly, slowly over.  I keep gnawing at the jumps because, in the velvet darkness of the blackest night, there is a faint, flickering hope that he may yet cart my sorry ass around Prelim &/or over a mini-prix.

Work: Yesterday, 1x, short walk but with dog for distraction.
Today, 2x, slightly longer walk/ground exercises.
Grade: A few silver star moments, mostly gold.

In my jumping days, we started each session by trotting a crossrail.  Always.  Whether the instructor agreed or not.  How do you start a jump school?