Lope

When we were kids my mom taught us this ryhme:

The Antelope

Cantelope

'cus him Momma won't let him.

Get it? Cantelope? Can't elope? I don't know if she was trying to teach us vocabulary or trying to be funny. 

Anyway.

Stormy is living with someone else for a little while. Not that she lived with me before. (Unfortunately). This friend of mine is an excellent horse trainer, and she is teaching Stormy a few things. (And teaching me things too of course.) Last Sunday we went on a very nice trail ride, where I got very frustrated with Stormy wanting to take off with me. But it was still an awesome trail ride and I learned stuff. And after that Mrs. Trainer Friend got on Stormy and started working on her going into a canter (lope) easier. She said the trick is to work on it someplace where she likes to lope anyway, then once she learns she can go straight into a lope, start trying other places. So she rode her in her yard for a while. Telling her to go faster at her favorite go-faster spot. This is a picture of her on Stormy:

Note the loose stirrup. Whoops! And I didn't mean to cut her head off...

And Stormy's head and body aren't actually that out of proportion, I was sitting above her on top of the round pen to get this pic. 

And here's a picture of me on her. It's blurry because it was actually a video that I took a screen cap from and it was very zoomed in. Oh well. I like that you can't see my face anyway.

Boots and Scary Things

Stormy got some hoof boots. So far she hasn't acted like she even notices them on her feet. They fit very well (should fit even better now that I adjusted the wires a little more. Now the straps won't stick out so far. See picture below.) I rode her with them for the first time this weekend. We headed North on Dobbs, in the direction of the bigger gravel that we never ride on. 

So I took my horse that hasn't been ridden by herself away from other horses for months...

and took her by herself in a direction she has only gone once before, (ages ago)...

and towards the house with all the barking hunting dogs. 

Oh and I did it during the time of the day that the house just south of us holds their target practice portion of their concealed carry classes. (Turns out the gunshots are actually louder when you head north. They echo off of something.)

She did very very well. Considering. Occasionally a truck would drive past which helped me move her further down the road because she not afraid of trucks, and the noise drowned out the dogs and extraloud gunshots. But at a certain point when she was fairly calm but we were getting closer to the house with the dogs, I decided to get off and lead her. The last time I fell off when I was riding away from home she RAN all the way back home. I don't mind walking, but I don't want her galloping down the road and falling or getting hit by a car. 

We walked about 3 miles all together. Her boots did great. She stepped on them a couple times when she was dancing around at scary things like cows and burnt down barns, and they stayed on just fine. (By the way she used to live with cows, I don't know why she doesn't remember they aren't scary!) And there was no signs of rubbing when I took them off.

The only problem I had with the boots was: when she walked in the grass and brush, debris looked like it was getting kicked up against her fetlock and falling into the heel captivator (the back of the boot.) The heel captivator was nice and secure and has padding, so I hoped it wasn't actually falling INTO her boot. But when I removed them there was a big sharp sticker stuck to the padding inside the heel captivator of one of the boots...I don't know what I can do to keep that from happening again.

Riding Horses like Motorcycles

 Last Saturday I got to ride Stormy on a dirt motocross track. The guy that owns it has a professional motocross team that trains on that track, and it just happens to be a very ride-able distance from my trainer's house. (Stormy is at the trainer's right now...did I mention that?) Since nobody was going to get off their horses and take pictures, here are some rough sketches of what we did:

There were small moguls. good for trotting or cantering over. I learned to switch between leaning forward and leaning back very fast. it was like going over tiny jumps in a row...only not.

There were also big steep hills that were fun to run up. Here's the first one we went over:

And here is what happened when we got to the top:

There were also flat areas and banks on the curvy areas. Lots of running happened

t h e  e n d.

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.