The Morning Chronicles 1

Interesting morning at the barn. I was actually running early for a little while. The preschoolers behaved for a bit. My preschooler stayed in the aisle and ate breakfast while I cleaned out her stall. My middle-schooler decided to ignore me when she smelled the preschooler on me. She walked straight out to the pasture and never looked back. The kindergartner had a mental and emotional breakdown when asked to leave his stall. Twenty-five minutes later, he finally decided it would be ok to come out of his stall at a trot. Went back to rescue the preschooler from the aisle and found that the Houdini had escaped her halter (reg. halter) and was having a conniption fit along with the other preschooler. When putting her halter back on, she decided that halters are evil and aren’t meant to be worn. After ensuring her for five minutes that the halter was ok, she was ready to go out. Both preschoolers ran out to the pasture this morning bucking and rearing. Finally, my backup showed up and I'm now at work.

Hey everyone!

Sorry I haven't said anything in the past few months. Life has a way of constantly getting in the way. Some things have changed recently, one of which is that I now have a second partner, Millie.

I'm going to try something new so that I force myself to get on here and keep this thing updated. Introducing, The Morning Chronicles. I want to share just a little bit of my amusing barn mornings with you all.

Not Much Has Been Going On

I haven't played with Jewel lately. Between my classes and Jewel's stifle problems, I just haven't had the time to do anything. I did play with her a couple of weeks ago when she didn't want to stand still for me to trim her feet. She is moving better, but you can still tell something is wrong when she stops from a trot or canter.

A few weeks ago, I started playing with Ashes again. I am hoping to find her a nice Parelli home soon. I've had a saddle pad and surcingle on her now. She has been doing really well. At 5, she has the maturity to handle the situations presented to her. We have been working on the 7 games as well. I've played with Millie a bit too. She has decided to become a problem horse. She used to be my little sweetie pie that I could do anything with and now she has decided that she is a big girl and will do what she wants. Regardless of this, we had a nice liberty session the other day. We just did some simple stuff like zone 3 driving game and a few of the 7 games.

Taking Some Time Off

For the past month, Jewel has been having stifle and stiffness problems. During our lesson with Kristi Smith, she suggested that Jewel was tight. However, we got Jewel loosened up and she was still having issues. I have decided to let her have some time off. I'm super busy with college right now, so it's not messing me up. I have been advised that I should bring along a second horse. I can always play with my grandparents' horses if I want to do something. Jewel has had about two weeks off so far. I'm going to start with a month off and see how it goes. I'm also saving up my money for a vet visit. I want to get to the bottom of what is wrong.

Private Lesson

Yesterday I had a wonderful private lesson with Kristi Smith. I gained quite a few more arrows for my quiver. A large part of the lesson was spent on being more particular with Jewel during the circling game. I let her get away with way too much. Things went well. By the end of it, Jewel was making nice circles with the middle of the rope on the ground. We played the traveling circling game for a while too and when a jump just happened to appear in front of Jewel, she popped over it. After playing online for about half of the lesson, we moved onto liberty. Jewel did great with that too. Kristi taught us some neat manuevers. Kristi went to play with Jewel at liberty and Jewel didn't want to partner up with her. I gave her the key to Jewel's heart, a soft peppermint. We didn't play at liberty for long. When we worked on freestlyle Kristi has us do snaky bends. Jewel wasn't cooperating, so Kristi rode her for a while. They both got a nice workout. lol. Jewel does a lot better going to the left instead of the right. Another nice thing that the track taught her... We will work through it though. Playing with her would become boring if I didn't have challenges come up. All I can do is become more savvy.

A Photo

I just wanted to share a picture of how well Jewel is doing. She used to be scared to death of the woods due to a deer jumping out at her one day. Although she was slightly wary of the woods during our ride, I didn't feel like she was going to explode at any moment. I didn't pushed her to go towards the woods. She went willingly and I could tell that there weren't any threshold issues.

I never seem to have the time to update this thing.

I have had some really good riding sessions with Jewel as of late. I have finally learned how to use true phases while riding and mean it. One day I was on the verge of frustration while riding Jewel. She is fine if I just let her mosey around and do her own thing. However, once I want her to do something I get pinned ears and she'll stop and kick out. Needless to say, she has a tantrum. Well, my friend, who is half Parelli and half normal still, basically told me that I shouldn't let Jewel get away with so much. I agreed and really concentrated on getting her to move forward with some enthusiasm. Per my friend's suggestion, I used my carrot stick to tap Jewel instead of using my saddle strings for my phase 4. That worked like a charm. She started trotting around and having a fabulous time. I was able to post her trot with ease. We must have trotted around for a good 30 minutes with no problems. My friend then suggested that I try to ride her in the larger pasture (the same pasture that I had my accident in). Jewel was behaving nicely, so I went ahead and tried it. She was incredible! All of the thresholds that we had always had problems with weren't an issue at all. We trotted all the way out to the far end of the pasture and then circled back. When we started back towards the gate she asked me if she could go faster. I have never had her ask me that before. It felt right. I let her know it was okay and she broke in the smoothest canter that I had ever gotten from her. My friend hadn’t seen us canter, so Jewel and I did it again. After that we ended the day on a good note. Another thing that has improved Jewel’s mood drastically is that I have started carrying treats on me anytime I’m at the barn. Prior to this, I always had a hard time with the catching game and Jewel would run off when I got near her. Now she walks up to me without any issues. She LOVES soft peppermints.
The next day I was able to play with and ride Jewel again. Everything went great yet again! When we got to our cantering part she knew that I was thinking about cantering and we were off. When I thought about stopping, she stopped. We were truly in unity. I have to say that that was the most amazing feeling I have ever had with her.
A week or so later, friend, level 4+ Parelli student, came out and watched me play with and ride Jewel. She taught us some new things. She helped us with sideways over and obstacle and sideways towards. Jewel did really well. When we got to our riding part and went on to our cantering bit, she was impressed. She has seen me during some of our good days and bad and she said that my whole demeanor changed. All I can say is, I LOVE MY HORSE!
I got to play with and ride Miss Jewel yesterday too. We didn’t do too much. Both of us just weren’t in the mood riding wise. We played on the ground for about 2 hours. I hadn’t been able to play with Jewel for about 10 days due to college and being finals week. She started crowding me a bit like she used to and we had to work through that. I worked on exerting my energy and letting her know that my bubble is OFF LIMITS when I say so. I think for the most part the only reason why she crowded me was because she was confused about what I was asking her to do, which was the circling game. My send wasn’t good enough and once I straightened that out, she was fine. When we eventually rode, we just rode in the paddock. I put my reins over the horn on my saddle and we just moseyed. I was actually surprised because Jewel took to the rail. Keep in mind that this is the horse who HATES follow the rail and usually diverts away from it however she can. I decided to try something new with Miss Jewel and we pulled the carrot stick behind us as we walked around. Jewel could care less. So, all in all, I have had some pretty amazing things come about with my horse lately. Life is good!