Wednesday, September 28, 2011

four horses

Well, five if you count Inky.  Four horses to ride every week.  I'll be trying to ride them, well, so that they get ridden 3Xweek which could include rides by other people.  That is, for me, a lot of riding.  I LOVE IT!

I also love it when cowboys call me "girl" and say they'd fight for me.

And I've almost saved enough money to join Parelli for a year and then I'll be doing and sending off a video for my first levels, and a humongous clinic is in May.

And, you know, one just never knows what all could happen when one brings a magical horse onto the place and changes the whole dynamic.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

begin again

I should have a photo, perhaps, of my nice orange carrot stick and it's nice savvy string.  Or of my nice blue natural horseman's halter and it's nice white flecked with something 12 foot lead (with heavy swivle snap).  Anyway, I don't.

But I do have those things now, because someone had an extra stick/string and someone else switched from Parelli to Anderson and had the halter/lead and was willing to trade it for a few rides on her horse.  A horse, by the way, that I really like a lot.

Increase has pretty much just had a month off.  There were at least two weeks I was working at both farms, and then another week before we really figured out a schedule that worked for us all, and then, well, I do not find change easy.  And the whole family had to adjust.  I kept telling the husband, just wait, just be patient, it will settle out.

It has been a good change.  I might say a very very very good change but I really don't want to hurt anyone's feelings.  It isn't like I came from a horrid situation to a great one.  I just moved from one barn to another, both good barns, both populated with compassionate horsemen.  But I went from no opportunities to opportunities.  I work and care for horses, including stalls and troughs, of course, but here I also have the opportunity to ride and train, and I already have the chance to begin teaching too, with hopefully more of that to come as we develop a few lesson horses.  So, yeah, pretty much everything I said I wanted to do, I get to do, and with prospects for ever more.  And that's awfully nice.

Anyway, Increase had her first Parelli session today.  I am certainly not fluent yet but at the same time, I think I'm understanding.  I've watched a good bit of the level one DVDs from several years ago, and gotten to observe a number of people play with various horses.

Inky is scary smart.  And we didn't do much.  But as Duke looks more and more forlorn, I'm not even looking to sell her yet.  She's my project at this point, to see what I can do with her.  She was great.  Hopefully we'll get the language of Parelli together.

I guess I need to ask what it is I need to do to do my level one.