20 october 2009

ITS RAINING! YEY! I mean its been sunny like two days and a half in a row; who wants sunshine? Bring on the soaked coats and jumpers and shirts and jods and shoes and socks (if your lucky and have enough layers the top is usually alright)! And bring on the freezing mornings when you feel like your back in dad and sussi's basement trying to get dressed under the covers cause just stickin your hands out to grab your clothes is cold enough to make you shiver (depsite three covers)! And while we are at it; lets have some freakishly loud thunder to freak both me and the horses out!

There; I've moaned enough for one day ;D I am actually happy despite this; work is just busy enough; I've had some really fun treks, got to hack a showjumper out yesterday and go cantering up a huge hill, I'm responsible for schooling a future guidehorse for treks (he's broken and all but a jumpy and nervous little thing) and while the others are away on competitions I'm getting to lunge my two favorite horses once a day (apart from my favorite trekers of course) to keep them in shape.

So the horse I'm schooling is Dolphin (he has a star shaped like a dolphin on his forehead its really cool lol) , and I worked him for the first time yesterday. (Oh, if youre not interested in working horses you might wanna skip the next couple of paragraphs) He's a pain to catch and I knew that from before; so just to be sure I brought a feedbucket over to the gate and made sure my hands had feed-smell lol, anyway he was standing pretty close by with one of his friends, who is pretty easy to catch so i went up to them and started chatting to his mate, who emidiately picked up the smell and started licking and nibbling at my hands, needless to say Dolphin got curious and after a couple of minutes i managed to catch him without any issues and he came out of the paddock on a loose leadrope.

Since I wasn't quite sure what to expecct from him (I've only seen him lunged and ridden once) I decided to be basic, he was clearly nervous, so I didn't tie him up, I just grabbed a soft bodybrush that was lying on the ground (my bad, it should have been picked up earlier :P) and started on the neck, at first he kept backing up when I moved to reach but he soon got the point and stood still except for when I went for his legs, but the approach and retreat technique is awsome (look it up in any Natural Horsemanship book if your interested) and eventually he stood for me to go as far down as his knees.

My lack of preparation led to me suddenly standing there with a horse I needed to tack up but didn't want to tie up since he was without his mates and it was windy and he was a bit jumpy, and where was my tack? All in the stables. Genius Hanna... So I put him in a pen and brought everything out and then went to get him again (once again I rubbed some feed on my hands so I coud convince him to come faster) and I took him out and managed to tack him up on a loose leadrope without him moving about (even though I had the saddle make noise etc on purpose to see how he'd behave).

Lunging time; this farm has a lot of stuff I wish I could bring home (like the amazing river and that lol) but the roundpen is definately at the top of my list! Anyway, thats where I placed myself and Dolphin, I skipped the lungewhip cause I didnt see the point in bringing it when just flicking the rope gently made him jump to the sky. Sending him out was easy, making him keep going without turning around and bouncing or taking of like a nutcase was less easy. I don't know if it was just my lack of knowledge in "proper" lunging or if he just doesn't get it, he clearly wasn't getting me.

Lovely... So the next twenty minutes were spent trying to teach him to do things my way, to turn only when told and to turn the direction he was told without panicking etc, and taught him the basic commands that I need him to respond to. When he finally did two perfect turns in a row and trotted and slowed down on command I stopped; and I was sooo proud of him. It was probably not what I was supposed to do but if I'm gonna be riding him I need to know that he can listen to me, knowing that he listens to better riders isn't much comfort if he wont do as I say.

Anyway; horsey talk over for those who dropped out five paragraphs ago! Not that I have much else to talk about; there's the weather and the horses and thats about it! Oh the phone; I dropped my phone one day when out on an hr and a half trek and since the weather was pretty bad (suprise) I figured that was it and bought a new phone the following day.. However Dee being the hero that she is found it two days later, and the bloody phone works :D despite all the rain it was out in!