Confession Time

It's sometimes said that a dog's personality is a reflection of their owner's personality. I hope that's not true of horses. I was told this weekend that my horse is a bully.  

I took it to heart, and am working on nipping it in the bud. She has become very herd-bound, and really gets agitated when I try and ride her away from the other horses. I knew that much. However, I hadn't noticed how much she just pushed me around. She's great in the barnyard, but when I take her on the trail she's pretty bad. So I got a lesson on Friday from my farrier-who-is-also-a-horse-trainer on what to do when she starts throwing a temper tantrum. (That's the best way I could think of how to describe what she does). She demonstrated just how bad she can be, and I got told how to fix things (and that if I don't it will only get worse.) She's going to be going through horsey boot-camp now. Lots of riding like I've said before, and there's going to be a zero tolerance for outright rude behavior (she's bad about trying to rub her face on me.)

*Just to note, she wasn't actually being crazy when the first picture was taken, she was in the process of turning to look at something. And of course in the second picture she had just taken a drink of delicious leaf-filled water and was just liking her lips.

Point Your Toes

Portrait Process Wednesday

Strata

Can you tell what this is?

Looks pretty cool, huh?

To scale:

If you guessed it's paint then you're right. I paint with acrylic paint, which basically turns to plastic when it's dry. I never clean my pallet when I'm done painting, I just cut away the layers when they build up too high. Every few months I put a new blade in my Xacto and start hacking away, and peeling back pretty cool-looking-if-you-ask-me layers of paint. I try and get big chunks.  

But most of the pieces end up small. 

Like-a dis:

I don't know what do do with my pallet layer chunks. But the're so cool looking I don't throw them away. I'm not a pack-rat I swear. I tried putting them in a little bowl for decoration:

Dust Bath

Stormy rolling after a long ride, during which there was lots of trotting and even some cantering and some throwing of I-want-to-go-back-to-the-barn fits. Which I won. She got sweaty. 

When I got Stormy she hadn't been ridden in years, and she still has some barn-sour and herd-sour tendencies. What makes it worse is the herd matriarch, Sonora, whinnies her head off when any members of her herd leave. Stormy really finds it hard to resist. My goal this summer is to ride her as close to every day as I can get, and work specifically on going on rides with just the two of us. She can be such a dream to ride when she isn't wanting to go back to the barn--she's getting really good at neck reining and she even responds to my seat and legs very well now (most of the time.) 

On a side note. I'm having a BIG PRINT SALE and it ends tomorrow. 

Wordless Wednesday

New Pillow Pups

Boston Terrier Pillows now available--three different outline colors.

Handmade

Not only are my pillow pets handmade, each "M" signature tag is stamped with a stamp I hand-carved from an eraser. (The reason being, I was pressed for time before a craft show when I made the first batch of pillows.) I'm not sure how long my eraser stamp will hold up ...