Fear itself

"...the  only thing we have to fear is fear itself."  -FDR

I have a fear. A paralyzing fear. And I have a fear of that fear. I very rationally should either not be afraid, or I should not do the thing that scares me.  This is apparently not my way. I also know the fear is my biggest problem, I tend to throw up my hands (figuratively... most of the time) and kind of try flailingly to somehow make it through.

This is the cause of significant issue due to the fact jumping scares the bajeezes out of me. And right now I'm doing it maybe three times a week (sometimes less). Last week I was in a private lesson where the flat was perfect and literally all of my wheels fell off the second the standards and poles got lugged out. I understand a lot of things in principle.  I know you just keep your eyes up, heels down, toes forward, squeeze tight with your lower legs, keep your back straight, follow with your arms, trot in canter out, downward transitions by stopping in your body not with the reins, breathe, blink, etc, etc, etc.  I also know I can know these things all I want as I make a decent line at a good forward trot, and proceed to do few (or none) of the above on the actual jumping part. The jumps where I manage to do things kind of right are not based on any actual skill, or timing, or learning. More or less fluke outliers, not worth considering in the scheme of my riding ability.

I had a riding exam about a week and a half ago where I went over maybe six jumps of the smallest possible introductory size.  I proceeded to fall off on my first attempt and be jumped way, way out of the tack on every single other. On top of this, I was told what has come to be my all time least favourite (non-life threatening) type of news.  Have you guessed it? If you thought, "Your saddle doesn't fit", then DING DING DING, you win! I just got this new saddle. I don't think I've owned it a month. It seems to be twisting. The prospect of saddle shopping is kind of strange in a way, because if I were doing it voluntarily I think it would probably be super rad (I think it would be comparable in excitement to if I were able to buy suuuper nice tall boots). But though saddle shopping means new saddle, it also means trying saddles (literally worse than scrubbing really scummy water troughs). I'm going to talk to some people, see if there's something I can do, maybe get it reflocked or something. That on top of the disaster that was most of the rest of the test, made it not the best day.

Fortunately, I did manage to pass my riding test! (Which qualifies me for a rather exciting event in the fall that I'm hoping to blog about!!!) Each movement of the required elements is scored out of 10, with 10 being excellent, 0 being you literally didn't even try, and 6.5 being sufficient (with a 65% required in order to pass the riding element).  My jumping recieved a 5.5.  5 is insufficient, and 6 is almost sufficient, so my jumping overall is almost almost sufficient.  I had a good laugh over that.  A 3 is rated as bad, so I'd definitely hate to see what a jumping score of 3 is.

I also had another pony club lesson two days later.  The exercise set up was two jumps  perpendicular to the rail and set off the track at E and B respectively, with one fence set up in the center of the ring on the diagonal. There were three of us riding, and one part of our warmup was a spiral in at the trot until we all ended up in a small circle nose to tail. It was interesting the different challenge of doing the exercise with other people.  Then, one at a time we worked over the jumps, starting at E, then the diagonal, then around to B. We started at a trot, and the goal was to get a canter transition over the poles and canter out, transitioning back to the trot between fences.  The first couple attempts I only managed to get the canter about a stride after the fence.  Then the other girls in my lesson both took a turn and I tried again with more success.  I was worrying too much about the fence when all I really needed to do was worry about timing my transition.  Really it's no different than working on the flat, trying to get a transition in a particular place like in a dressage test.  Tell that to the fear.  I also ended up doing the exercise the same, except only trotting to the first fence and cantering the rest.  It was a hot mess the first time, but the second I pulled myself together we actually accomplished it quite capably.  To go and show what a well behaved, excellent horse I have, she even did a flying change when she picked up the wrong lead after the second pole. Fancy mare.

I also, fortunately, know how to laugh at myself.  I was at a charity casino for my local equestrian park recently, and one of the ladies there showed us a video of her daughter's stadium round at a recent event.  She's a really great rider, and it sounds like she did really well.  I, naturally, responded by pulling up the video of myself at the first jump and showing it around.

(Here, enjoy a terrible quality cell phone video and take a moment to remember it's okay to laugh at yourself... that, and my horse is basically a saint for not completely turfing me).

Quarterly goals recap Jan-March/Second Quarter Goals

The first three months of this year have gone by faster than I could possibly have imagined.  I think I may have found the time to grab the occasional breath a handful of times in the first quarter of 2015, but I can't be sure.  Without further ado, the overdue analysis of my goals:

Make more horse time.  Too many excuses and not enough pony have been happening recently, and I intend to put a stop to it.   Success! The lengthening daylight hours especially have been a huge help in completing this goal!

Play with the Horse Ball.  Jazz's absolute favourite thing and I'm not even sure I've brought it out more than twice in the last year.  Plus a fun thing both on the ground and under saddle. I brought out the ball one day, only to remember why it had been put away in the first place after an immense half-hour struggle to get it inflated enough to be safe.  

Put the Western saddle back on occasionally. I kind of miss it.   Done and done! I had it on at least twice, one of which was  pony sharing with two awesome kids at my barn, and Jazz was an angel for them.  

Do something about my tall boots.  I need to bathe them in boot stretch or get room put in at the shoe repair place because they are much too tight on my calves.  Yes! I bought the most wonderful, most beautiful, bestest imaginable brand spanking new paddock boots and half chaps a few weeks back.

Tack store haul! I also got a new saddle pad and cookies!

Write a product review post or two.  Product reviews are the kind of post I will read 100% of the time I see them on my blogger dashboard, but I have yet to write one.  This one was a failure.  I attempted to write a review of leather care products and was starting to assemble the pieces and then pre-spring break crazy schedule and spring break happened.  

My personal favourite picture from leather care product review day. 

Think about a bitless bridle option. Since my horse needs her teeth done every 6 months at this point, it might be nice to have an alternative when her mouth hurts.  I do own a bitless bridle, but I don't love it and I'm considering a different type of bridle.  At no point did I even think about this at all.  There were too many other things on both the horsey horizon and the personal one.  

Try to talk less in lessons. Pretty self explanatory but a definite bad habit of mine. I definitely made progress, but this is ongoing, so I'll probably repeat it in another quarter.  

Show off the horse.  I have been telling many, many friends for a long time they can come meet my horse, but I have taken very few people out to the farm.  I may end up moving this goal to a different quarter depending on how our winter goes (I probably shouldn't introduce my non-horsey friends who have never ridden a horse to the crazy winter Jazz I know and love).  I had a relative come to visit just last week and we went for a farm visit.  Plus I shared her with the two kids at my barn mentioned earlier.  I like the idea of sharing her, so this will be another repeat goal.

Get better at leg protection. I will divide this one into two parts
a) use the brushing boots and/or open front boots I own much more often
b) polos! I have one set and I am honestly pitiful at wrapping them  Truth be told, I didn't do this, but in hindsight the last three months were not a good time for this goal, as we're lucky to be able to do a good flatwork session most days, so it doesn't seem that necessary to do boots.  This one will probably be back in the summer.  

And because I love sharing him, here's my cat, continuing to be deluded into thinking he's a person.  

Goals for the Second Quarter (April-June)

Survive the next month and a half.  There are huge time commitments coming up on the personal horizon.  May especially will be no doubt roaring along at 1000 miles an hour, and I think it's only fair to myself to acknowledge that fact and try to do my best.

See to it the horse is fed. I think I've mentioned here before that Jazz is prone to bouts of diarrhea that can cause a sore, rubbed bum. I had the vet out on her last episode, and one of the new management protocols we're trying out is more regular doses of her probiotic.  At very least every 2-3 days she needs to be fed a dose of it, and luckily C will be able to help on some of the aforementioned crazy weeks.

Get the horse photo ready.  Some important photos are being taken with the horse very late May.  Make the necessary arrangements (trailer loading practise, thorough grooming the days leading up to photos, cleaning tack, etc.)

Casey is always photo ready. 

Try to get pony exercised.  I'm actually taking May off of lessons since I physically do not have the time.  I have someone in mind who I want to ask if they'd be willing, so if possible, she'll be getting a little training and exercise.


June: Advance.  Make some progress with riding.  More work in non-lesson rides, less messing around.  Get some momentum going heading into our busier riding time in the summer.

Edit: Keep it positive.  It's come to my recent attention that I am often not good enough at talking up my pony successes with my real life horsey friends, and I tend to overemphasize our difficulties.  Work on that.

Toss up

[Insert halfhearted apology for lack of recent pictures before arriving at the issue at hand]

Lesson day again.  This was the first one in Jazz's new English saddle, and it is not what I'd call a lesson to sneeze at.

I have a half hour lesson from 6-6:30 and it's generally on Wednesday, unless there's a cancellation and I have to do a make-up lesson.  Tonight my 6-6:30 Wednesday lesson ended in me finishing up and dismounting my horse at almost exactly 7:00 with a few prospects I'm not presently thrilled about.

It started out relatively standard.  It was absolutely pouring rain, and the sound of it on the tin roof was nearly deafening.  This made Jazz a little distracted, but nothing terrible.  I did some short groundwork exercises and she seemed fine.  I put on her bridle and brought her to the mounting block where she was kind of fidgety, but we also need a lot more practice with mounting blocks anyways.

By then my instructor was there and we started with a really simple, nice walk.  Then she set up some poles (the pole bending kind, not the trot poles kind), and we worked on bending using more leg than rein. It was fairly difficult at first, but then my trainer moved half the poles from the center line to the quarter line so each had three poles twice as far apart.  That started off much better, but once I knew how I should be asking, Jazz stopped listening and began totally ignoring my leg, especially my left leg.  It was getting more and more blatant and head-tossy until my trainer suggested I change tactics.  She had me do a new exercise where I face Jazz perpendicular to the long wall of the arena.  Basically the exercise is to ask Jazz to move sideways, and if she's not co-operating and generally being rebellious, to push her forward into the wall.  This should have been fine, but remember alllllllllllll the rollbacks we did back in the day? Remember alllll the anticipating Jazz started doing, backing up and sometimes actually trying to do rollbacks when I just asked for a stop or one step of backup?  Well a little rein and leg pressure she didn't want to deal with + a nose in the wall = Jazz backing up halfways to Timbuktu.  My trainer suggested if she really runs away backing like that (as in the reins are very loose and I am both clucking at her and squeezing/tapping with my legs), to make it just as much work as what she's avoiding (read: back her up until backing is the least appealing option available).  That did seem to help a little bit with that, and she did have a couple halfways decent leg yields in that exercise.  We just worked on that briefly before moving on, with my trainer explaining that it's an exercise that can be a bit nit-picky and very frustrating to a horse that has difficulty or is just not fully understanding it.
So we tried to go back to the poles and bending.  The wheels fell off a little there.  She was totally blowing past the poles and still choosing to pretend my leg was not there.  My trainer had me do small circles to try and get her back, and that devolved to Jazz drifting in her circles until she was practically running over the other horse in the arena, and generally freaking out and throwing her head every which direction.  It took a long time and a lot of circles to work out all the general knobbing about she was doing and she finally calmed down for two seconds, long enough to end our lesson on an okay note.

Thing to work on #8
This. Just all of this nonsense.

Here comes the un-thrilling prospects part.  My trainer said she wanted to try her in a tie down.  Everything I've seen and done and been taught since I've been working with horses (and more specifically Jazz) makes me very hesitant to immediately turn to big tools the second something's going wrong.  That being said, it's not safe to be riding a six-year-old idiot running around saying "screw you" to the simplest possible exercise (you don't even want to know how many circles we had to do before she did one full one without flipping out so we could stop and I could finally get off and end my marathon lesson).  I also have no knowledge whatsoever on tie downs, martingales (running or standing), or any such contraption.

This is where you readers out in blogland (if there are any) come in.  What do you guys think? What experiences has everyone had with using training tools like martingales? I've done a little research so far, but good descriptions of the differences in action between running and standing martingales and tie-downs would be helpful.  What's my long term course of action if I do decide to use one? Keep in mind I currently have an English saddle but a western bridle with no noseband.

Curious progress

Well there's no question about it, Jazz is a different horse than she ever has been before.  Practically every day I'm at the farm now I can just ground tie her outside in the sun and groom her there while she dozes.  Her ground manners are almost all there, with occasional hiccups that are usually fixed with just a minute or two of ground exercises.

Things that are getting better #5 (remember when I used to actually remember to do these?)
Ground manners and more ground manners.  She could not be more chill ground tied for grooming most days now.

That being said, she isn't all different in good ways.  Jazz has always had evasions. It used to be laziness.  When I first started her, she was impossible to motivate.  I sometimes find that hard to believe considering how much she wants to go all the time now. Luckily, she isn't usually terribly stubborn, so she lets go of them as soon as I find an effective way to correct or deal with her evasions, that is until she finds a new one.  They usually aren't terribly big or showy (says the girl who's been sorting out her rearing on the ground within the last couple months), they're just little tests from her to see how she can get out of work.  Lately Jazz has been really improving, which naturally means stepping up the difficulty a bit and asking her to engage her muscles more and more correctly.  This naturally leads to a whole host of evasions, because it's much easier for her if she can derail me from our work by acting out, and she doesn't have to work so hard or engage her muscles so much.  She's a funny little mare with an attitude.

Recently it's been a bit of head tossing.  I think I've mentioned before that her main attitude issue, especially when it comes to contact, is to get huffy.  She just gets sort of frustrated, and starts snorting and moving her head a hundred tiny little moves in every direction at once.  I figure a small part of that is a pain memory from back in November when she needed her teeth done and it took me a week or so to realize it.  That being said, it is a lot just attitude.

Today was my first lesson with my new trainer.  I really like her, she's very good and I think she can really help me get places with my riding.  She seems to have a more English slant, compared to the more Western style of my previous trainer, but there is nothing wrong with that.  When I brought Jazz in, she was just as chill as she has usually been lately, and I was ready to get on soon.  We started out pretty standard, and the instructor had me doing 20m circles and working on going straight and bending to the inside and the outside.  Believe it or not, we had never done counter bending before, but Jazz seemed to be picking it up not bad.  Then we worked on it at the trot, and she also did fairly well.  We worked on trot to walk transitions, because the instructor wanted me to work on pushing her forward into walking, so that she would use her hind end to do the transition rather than pushing down into it with her front feet.  That was one thing that stood out to me as something that would be really good to work on, because traditionally, her trot to walk transitions have been kind of scrambly sometimes as she tries to keep trotting (she loves her forward).

Thing to work on #5
Trot to walk transitions

Thing to work on #6
Bending and counterbending using proper leg and hand positions.

That was when things got a little interesting.  The instructor asked to see Jazz's lope, and I started off on her right lead, traditionally her better side, and she did pretty okay.  Of course after that she was getting really rushy and kind of charge-y.

I rode yesterday, and she was really rushing.  She had almost no rate and wasn't listening to my half halts very well.  I decided to just bite the bullet and let her go, because I still felt like I had breaks, just not particularly sensitive ones.  Also I was feeling young and enjoying the summer sun and I don't really feel the need to justify it further.  Anyways I brought her into a lope that quickly turned into more of a gallop.  It was a blast.  She's pretty quick when she wants to be.  I let her go a couple laps of the arena and then slowed her back down, and we both took a rest for a minute or two.  I then made the mistake of deciding to take a lap or two the other way.  She is less balanced heading to the left on her left lead, and she made a fairly wide, leaning turn at the first corner, and just past the second she started crow hopping.  Whoops.  Maybe that wasn't such a good idea.  Anyways, I stuck it out with no problem (thank god.  I really need to make that post about Jazz the bucking bronco soon). And I did a cool down after that and hopped off, telling myself I wouldn't be stupid and push us like that again.  

So, back to today, she was really rushing her trot after her right lead lope.  Then she started counterbending against me and really cutting corners on our 20m circle, utterly ignoring my leg.  My trainer had me slow way down and move back to the walk, where she was still blowing all the way through my inside aids.  Then my trainer had me do a quick exercise that is basically stopping facing the wall and doing a hind end yield back and forth a couple times to re-establish that yes, you do know what leg means.  Then we worked our way back up, bending again at the walk to get her attention back.  Eventually we started trotting and then it got a little fancy.  Jazz was head tossing.  Not like she was before, though, like actually throwing her weight around and nodding like a trick horse.  It was lucky that it happened in the lesson actually, because the instructor was very helpful in keeping me calm and helping me focus.  She said how it was important, especially with a young horse like Jazz not to overreact to her little tantrums and to be extra sure to just keep doing the work as best I could so she's not getting out of it by acting out.  Not gonna lie, it was a little scary at least a couple times, and I was just doing my best to not picture Jazz rearing up and over like one of the horses at one of my gymkhanas last year.

Thing to work on #7
this newest evasion.

On the lighter side there's five new barn kittens and they finally all have their eyes open.  Here's the best picture I have of one of them.

Update: I have been really terrible at taking pictures of my horse lately.  I will hopefully take more soon.  With any luck I'll have something good to photograph coming up soon!

Moving forward

So since I have kept up with this blog for this long and (*fingers crossed*) seem to have at least a little bit of readership, I wanted to do a sort of quick overview about this blog and how I plan to use it in the future.

It is a big common theme with a lot of the horse blogs I personally read and follow to have goals.  Monthly goals, yearly goals, show season goals, lesson goals, all manner of goals.  I am not a big goals person.  It's partially me and partially Jazz, but it's a lot that I just simply don't really know what it is that I want in the long term. I am far from a veteran in the horse world, and there is just so much that I haven't tried yet.  I hadn't even so much as sat in an English saddle until last summer, and almost all of my horse experience in the pre-Jazz era was trail rides and more trail rides.  There are a thousand and one things I want to try with horses, and I can't know what I want to do with Jazz until I know what I want to do.  So far we've had a lot of fun with gymkhanas and rodeo events (mostly at the walk/trot), and my current loose idea is for Jazz to just be a happy, healthy horse who is safe to be around and has a good foundation of training to do whatever it is that she eventually ends up doing.  My current goal for myself is to learn to jump, and as I take English lessons in the summer, I will be accomplishing it soon with a little luck *knock on wood*.  I also am very interested in learning the basics of working cattle, and endurance, and cowboy challenge.  Since the association that puts on my gymkhanas also does cowboy challenge, I will be hopefully going to any of them that I am able and ready for.

Anyways, the point is that I have a fairly scattered existence with a lot of ideas about what my future with Jazz and with horses in general looks like, so monthly goals is just not a good exercise for me.  I try to go to the farm with no concrete expectations (except some basic manners and respect, of course), and as a result my progress can be very slow and halted sometimes.  I'm okay with that.  I have a young horse and a limited database of experience.  There is no reward for hurrying to accomplish this or that when I have no real reason to.  I don't mean to say that I would be okay with my training coming to a standstill, plateauing at decent and never rising again, but I am perfectly happy to plod along, facing challenges one at a time and really enjoying the ride.

The main reason for this blog is for me to chart my progress, and to help me keep track of my year/month/day/whatever with Jazz.  Also it's encouragement to document my experiences more with pictures, which I am horrible at.  I also have my things.  My things to work on and that are improving.  They are sort of my answer to goals.  It's hard to pay attention to how far you've come when you're struggling through hard times.  They mean to serve as a reminder of all the little victories, and a sort of push in the right direction.  I have no "Things that are perfect and need never be worked on again because they simply can't get any better" because I am working with a horse and that's a ridiculous concept where it comes to horses.  There are plenty of people who've been working with horses their entire lives that still say they have lots to learn, and I hope to be the same way.  You are never done learning, and I simply like to remind myself of that.

Sorry for the long, pictureless post.  I'll make my next one a little more visual if I possibly can.  And thanks for reading!

Oh, and one more thing about this blog.  I think that so far, it's been a fairly accurate representation of my time with Jazz.  I write about anything of significance or interest as honestly as possible with as much detail as I can remember, and I am aware of what these winter months are like.  They are our work time, our time where there's no room for all the love and cuddles if it means the respect has been pushed out, and that is the case with all our Januaries and Februaries so far, but just you wait.  Come summer, there will be a lot more time for fun and all the love for my pony I can possibly express in words.

New Tactics

Well, I've been avoiding this post for a couple days.

I'm still kind of avoiding it honestly.

I've been a little... shaken? I think that's the closest word I can find.  I just think I've lost some of my confidence.

Where to start?

Good news.  That's always a good place to start.  I think it's about time I started riding again.  I really think I'm getting close.  I've missed it a lot.  It's been much too long.

This is the part where I put the less good news.  I just feel like I've screwed up.  In reality, probably not really.  In my mind, a lot.  I just think I've been pushing too hard at the wrong things.  I've been working on some things lately that are hard for Jazz, and I think I've just been forgetting that too often.   She has a really hard time backing a) straight and b) sometimes just in general, and I've been putting a fair amount of pressure on her to do so lately.  I just think I've been putting too much pressure on her, asking too much without enough reward for doing what I'm asking.

Jazz is a sensitive horse.  She can really easily get overloaded, and I just don't like the idea that I've been overloading her.  On the bright side, (okay this next part may sound a bit counter-intuitive, but just hear me out) Jazz is a really expressive horse.  This means that if she is not pleased with something, she will make that fact very clear to me.  Those of you who have been reading a little while will recognize these objections as head tossing, rearing, blasting forward through her shoulders and most recently, biting.  Believe it or not, as much as I don't love these behaviors, I find them a million times more preferable than the alternative.  There are a lot of horses who simply aren't comfortable expressing themselves in this way, so they just trudge along quietly disapproving until eventually something sets them off and they have a huge blowout.  Comparatively, Jazz has the easier of the two problems to work out.  She's not a horse that lacks confidence in herself, all she needs is a little structure and direction to channel her into doing productive work.

So I think It's time for a little re-evaluation on my part.  I stopped riding because Jazz wasn't being safe and respectful on the ground.  Now she's getting closer and closer to safe, and quite honestly the biting only comes out when I'm really pushing her to back, so why aren't I riding yet? She is a thousand times better about respecting my space and listening to me on the ground.  She's not perfect, but has any horse ever been perfect, really? I think I need to discuss a new strategy with my trainer, but at least I know that now.  Better to try a new direction than to keep pushing against a wall.

Thing to work on # 5
Knowing when I'm just not heading in the right direction and when to reevaluate

Positive spin

Well they can't all be good days.  I apologize in advance because as much as I'm going to try not to whine and complain, I can't guarantee my success rate in actually accomplishing that goal.

So as you may have gathered, I had a less than encouraging trip to the farm today.  Jazz was just weird and spooky and SASSY.  Oh my god was she sassy, swishing tail, a very clear stomp of her back feet and a few pushy episodes from her shoulders, plus something new that I'll talk about in a second.  It was just discouraging, and I'm sorry to admit that it just got to me today, and I got a bit frustrated.  Is it too much to just ask for a couple of weeks of steady improvement, even just one week? Is that so much to want?

But I'm getting sidetracked.  Here's something positive: She didn't rear.  Not even close.  No big dramatic 'you're killing me here' head throws or anything.

Here's something less so:  she's found an alternative now that rearing is work.  She tried to nip me.  Five times.  It's so frustrating that I almost want to scream.  Would it have been so bad for her to just not have a big, dangerous avoidance maneuver for a week? a day? I tried to do the same thing I do when she tries to pop up on me, where I just yield her hind end until she really gives with both crossing her feet and bending through her body a bit.  Of course she then tried to bite me while I was at her side moving her hip, but luckily I had anticipated she might, so she wasn't able to actually get her teeth on me.  To be fair, she didn't actually get her teeth on me at all, they were warnings, but even so it still isn't EVEN REMOTELY ACCEPTABLE.  

So needless to say I was a little discouraged and frustrated and very done by the time I let her go.  It just sucks that we're taking one step forward and now what feels like about six steps back.

But to the point: as the title of this post suggests, I would like to try to put a positive spin on the day now that all of that is out of my system.  I did get a bit frustrated and emotional today, but this is the first day in recent memory that that has happened.  This time last year, I was also having a lot of troubles with Jazz (she really is not a January/February horse whatsoever), significantly less dramatic troubles since she had yet to add rearing and head tossing and now biting to her arsenal.  Anyway, I had hit some real road blocks in our training, and I was having a hard time getting someone to help me, and I felt like I was making no progress and Jazz was regressing and it was all my fault and all that sort of very un-fun stuff to be feeling. It got to a point where I would have weeks that I didn't even want to go to work with her because I was just going to be allowing her to get away with bad behavior that I had no idea how to fix and it didn't even seem worth going to the farm just to feel useless and powerless and go home upset again.

That was supposed to be the positive part of the post.  Oops.  Anyways going back to the good part, compare that to this one day out of pretty much all of my recent memory where I felt things didn't go well and got a little emotional while I was working with my horse.  One day.  No weeks turning into about a month of no progress and endless frustration.  One.  Day.  I guess it's not so bad as all that.

Things that are getting better # 3
Pushing emotions aside and just getting what needs to be done accomplished

That being said, Thing to work on # 3
Pushing emotions aside and just getting what needs to be done accomplished (today was big proof I'm not there yet)

Thing to work on #4
This new biting habit.  Nip it in the bud (get it? nip? Oh, I'm too funny).

Plus some good things happened after I left the farm that definitely helped my mood.  Look what came in the mail today!

 I ordered this "Gumiponi" as they are lovingly called from Custom Stall Signs on facebook and was so thrilled it arrived!

It's so cute! It's way tinier than I was expecting.  

I absolutely love their stuff! I also ordered a custom stall sign complete with adorable caricature of Jazz

Jazz lives outside, so her stall sign lives on my Jazz wall of fame.

 Plus a few months back they started collaborating with another awesome facebook page to offer custom embroidered saddle pads and hats.

Look at it though! Adorable! 

Jazz approved.

For those of you who haven't caught on to my obvious product placement yet, go to their page go now.

And speaking of things I got in the mail today, I couldn't help but laugh at the cover of the horse magazine that came in the mail for me today.

A little attitude adjustment is just what I'm needing right about now.  

We'll get there. I know we will.

Progress is progress no matter how small

Jazz is currently suffering from winteritis. If there is one thing Jazz hates,  it's bad weather. Also she's the big fancy herd matriarch,  five (I really can't stress that enough), and has an owner with a finite amount of knowledge (I would like to really emphasize that I am not an example to be followed without significant work, research, commitment and knowledgeable people there for backup).

That being said, today did feel like a tiny success,  even if it is several steps backwards from Jazz in her prime (read: Jazz in the summer).  She was dozing out in the pasture today, enjoying the moderately nice weather, so she started out pretty chill, and I took her into the barn.  She was being a jerk standing (so to speak, very little standing was actually involved) tied, so I told her firmly that that was not acceptable, and untied her, putting her into her own space and keeping her there until she was being respectful. It took a few minutes, but I brought her back from standing still but paying zero attention to me, glancing around at every possible thing there was to look at to a nice relaxed,  respectful stand. 

She got a nice reward and I moved into the arena,  where she got overstimulated again because "Mom the roof settles and there's different sounds and everything is plotting to eat me and I just know my friends are out having fun in the pasture without me". With some doing I got another nice stand out of her at the back of the arena and started to take her towards the door when she charged ahead because she thought she'd had about enough of manners for the day. Needless to say she got asked to do a bit more respecting, which she decided to make more interesting for me with a few head flails and a rear just to spice things up a bit, but I did find some remaining shred of manners underneath all that. 

You can't fool me little horse.  I know your three year old brain that wants to learn things is in there somewhere.

I'm assuming I didn't offend her too badly with my demands for basic respect,  since she kept following me over the fence once I'd let her go. Oh horse, you make it so easy to love you even when you're refusing to do the most basic of tasks. It's definitely not without it's challenges to have a young horse,  but it's far from without it's rewards. 

Thing to work on #2:

Space space and more space. There's nothing more paramount than reinforcing my space

Winter Strikes Again

It's days like this that I'm reminded that I own a five year old. I drove up to the farm Tuesday to find a field of incredibly friendly red mares (Jazz and five others, plus one bay that must feel very out of place). Everyone seemed to want to see me but my horse. Well, I suppose that's not exactly accurate. Jazz more couldn't make up her mind;  she kept coming and going until I got tired of it and just caught her. Of course this led to me leading a line of all the mares back to the gate like the pied piper. They do so love to follow their herd matriarch. Also I strongly suspect someone has been giving them treats,  because everyone seemed veeery interested in what was in my hands.

Once I had her out of the pasture,  I saw she had big chunks of ice in her toesies,  so I figured I would head straight into the sand arena rather than risk her slipping and sliding on the concrete barn floor... well, maybe not. The arena door was frozen shut again. Sigh.  There was a horse getting trimmed right in the doorway, so I decided to pick out what I could of the iceballs outside and go in the side door of the barn... or not.  I got the ice successfully chiseled out of one foot and had a start on the second when Jazz decided that standing was no longer what she was up for and plowed past my lovely friend C (who is not experienced with horses but is slowly learning more). About five or six times she got Jazz back to her spot for about five seconds before she was right back off again. Jazz was just super distracted, partially because in addition to the trimmer they were unloading hay bales right next to the barn, and partially because such just seems to be her way lately.  Jazz was starting to get tired of it, and when she reared (only about six inches, it wasn't terribly dramatic, I promise), I took her back and told her in no uncertain terms that that was very rude and very not allowed.  I put her back where she had been and when I got her to stand for a decent amount of time (actual standing, not the distracted-and-high-strung-but-not-moving kind of standing she had been doing before), I decided just to end there and let her go.  

Well, I decided to end there and let her go.  I was about halfway back to the pasture when C said something to the effect of, "Is it good to just give up on her like that? Shouldn't you maybe just work her in the yard again, get her to listen to you?"  I responded with something explaining how I just wanted to end with a win, but I gave in and turned back around. Huge mistake. 

..Which brings me to a new blog feature that I'm going to try out: things I have yet to master 

With horses

Thing #1 

Knowing when to trust my instincts and when to Listen to my well-meaning friends that don't know much about horses

 So I wound up struggling with her for about ten more minutes,  during which she stood still for perhaps fifteen seconds cumulatively,  reared as she had earlier twice, threw her head around about three times, and the coup de grace, did a spectacular mini-rear combined with what can only be described as a head flail in every which direction. Needless to say I was very upset with myself for not just putting her back when I wanted to in the first place.

Oh, how I miss 3-year-old Jazz

And the whole ordeal left me thinking about how I'd handled myself and comparing myself to when C was handling her, and how I really have gotten a lot better at dealing with not only Jazz, but any horse who's having a day like Jazz had on Tuesday.  I watched her take Jazz back and forth about six times without even a pause (Jazz really didn't want to stand still), all the while getting increasingly frustrated.  That is one area where I'm really proud of how far I've come.  In every horse book I've ever read, it stipulates that corrections should be treated much the way a lead horse would treat them in the pasture, with a quick correction based on body language (only escalating to a physical cue like a pop with the end of the rope if necessary), and quickly returning to a neutral state afterwards.  I've found that I can do this much more consistently without getting frustrated and feeling like everything's my fault all the time, and it feels so good.  I remember many an occasion where I would get so frustrated when I couldn't get Jazz to do something that I would end up in tears, but I've found myself much more able to detach from the emotion to find the best way to communicate what I want.  Progress, even a tiny step like this one, is still progress.  Considering our history in our past winters, I am definitely finding myself taking everything less personally.  I definitely look forward to the spring though.  Jazz makes it very clear she hates the cold just as much as I do.  

But how could I stay mad at a cute face like that?