Well, there was no entry last week because we couldn't go to Trainer's place, for personal reasons that I won't say here, but FINALLY I was able to go this week.  

Since it'd been 3 weeks since I was last at Trainer's, I was curious to see what might have changed.  Such as, perhaps, new hitching posts set in cement.  

Unfortunately, there were no hitching posts stuck in cement.  *rolls eyes*  There was, however, a mare in the indoor arena that was blanketed.  She was real friendly, as I walked along the fence she followed me with her head stuck over it. 

Little Tequila, my trainer's little white cute friendly dog, ran towards me in happy greeting, and of course I had to bend down to give him a pet.  While I was petting him, Trainer gave me a choice.  

Apparently, Helen went back to public school, so she won't be coming to the morning lessons anymore.  I'll miss her.  And Sally was sick, so she couldn't come to the morning lesson that week.  I was the only person who'd be riding the 9:30 lesson, so my trainer said I could ride in the 9:30 like usual, by myself, or ride with Carol when she came later with Medina.

To be honest, either sounded fine to me, but I chose to ride with Carol later.  I ended up liking my choice because I was able to get all the work done before the lesson. 

My first job was to go unhook the fence charger from the electric cord so my trainer could fix the fence.  The red roan mare, Riggs, had escaped, so my trainer needed to fix it.  

So I went and did that, then waited for a little while until my trainer gave me my next job.  It was stuffing feed sacks and looking for / picking up hay nets.

There weren't that many feed sacks.  One hay net had blown out from the pens.  In the pens, the hay bales were eaten down to a mound of hay, and so I went in there to see if I could pull out the hay net out from under it before it blew away.  

It was heavier than I thought it would be, and I got hay all over me and down in my boots, but I did pull it out.  So, I decided to try the second bale in the donkey pen.  I was partly succesful with this one, it tore and so I didn't get all of it out, but I got most of it.  

Then my trainer had me put two tires that had rolled away from the tire stack because of the wind back in their place.  Then she told me to turn the water on and see if the hose wasn't frozen.

See, part of the hose just stays in one place no matter where it's moved.  And thus, it's become covered by dirt and buried underground.  So, you can't drain a house when it's like that, and my trainer didn't know if it'd unfroze itself yet. 

If it was unfrozen, then I was to water the small tanks and then the big one in the donkey pen.

I did want it to be unfrozen, because watering is a job that I like.  However, when I turned on the water, only a tiny trickle came out the other end.  I debated between just going and telling my trainer that the hose was froze, or wait and see if it'd change.

It took awhile, and I just about gave up, but before I did, the water changed from a trickle to a stream, and eventually the water started coming through fully.  

So, I filled up the waters in the lesson horse pen first.  And while I was doing that, I noticed that Otis wasn't in there.  In fact, he wasn't anywhere on the place, and I wondered where he was.  I found out later where he was.  

I filled up the tank in the lesson horse pen, one of them, and then my trainer told me to fill up the two little tanks in the pen with Mistletoe and Riggs, then to put it in the big tank and come ride Lily. 

My trainer had mentioned before that when and if I put the hose in the big tank, I was to put in a ton of hose so that the horses couldn't drag it out as easy.  Because apparently they do that when the hose is left alone for periods of time.  So we were to make them work to drag it out ;)  

So I did that, I mean, I piled the hose in there.  And then I went to ride Lily, who my trainer had caught for me.  Thankfully, because she did try to get away.

My trainer told me specifically that she wanted me to walk Lily over a lot of things in the outdoor arena.  And of course, just get her to relax.  

So I groomed her, tacked her up, and headed out there.  

Lily wasn't the worst she's ever been, but she wasn't the best.  I just had to remember to really sit up, keep my feet under me, and let my weight drop.  Interestingly, when I dropped my weight, I found that she would slow down slightly.   When I kinda held it up, she wasn't as calm.  

And yeah, we did some circles, a serpentine, figure 8, etc.  I also walked her over a bunch of stuff: the telephone poles, some boards, the raised cavaletti, railroad ties, poles, a log.  I focused a lot on using my body effectively for the turning.  It's so hard sometimes, and yet so easy when I get it right...  Lily is great to practice on because she's so sensitive.  

Overall, the ride was good, a regular walk out ride on Lily.  As it went on, and she grew more relaxed, she started pulling a little more at the reins to stretch out.  I didn't let her do it all the time, but if she looked like she was going to stretch straight out, instead of that curling-behind-the-vertical stretch, then I let her sometimes.

So yeah, that was my ride on Lily.  I do like riding her, it was a good first ride of the year at my trainer's. 

The lady, who's just started coming and taking lessons with my trainer, I can't remember if I gave her a name...  Anyhow, I guess I'll call her Lady for now.  She finished up her lesson on Twister, who's being introduced into the lesson program again.  Another lady came and rode after her.  

Meanwhile, I put Lily back in her pen, pulled the hose out of the big tank that'd begun to overflow and turned the water off, then grabbed the hay fork by Yucca the stud colt's pen.  However, Yucca is going to be gelded Thursday, which means he'll be gelded by the time you read this ;)  

With the hay fork, my trainer had me grab the one-wheel wheelbarrow, so that I could scrape up the hay in the tack shed and feed it to Sage.  See, the pen next to Sage is Riggs and Mistletoe's pen.  Their hay bale is in the corner right next to Sage's, and she's bending the fence trying to snatch hay from their bale.  My trainer wanted me to dump the hay in Sage's pen next to where she was trying to get through the fence, so she'd eat that hay and not tear the fence down XD

Of course, my trainer said, she'll probably keep trying anyway 'cause that's horses for you XD  

There was a lot of hay in that shed.  Two wheelbarrows worth I hauled out, and there was still more I could have scraped up.  But I had to go catch Mariah and have my lesson.

Mariah didn't try to run away, although she did think about it.  But I caught her, and was curious to see if she'd changed much in the three weeks I'd been away.  

She was fine when I took a brush to her, but she did kinda try to snap me when I went to do her hooves.  She snapped when I was tacking her up and tightened the girth.  I tried to leave her alone when she changed expression.  I think she's getting better, and with the inflatable pad, she's not being rubbed on her shoulders anymore, but there's still remnants of it.

The girth I was using was way too big for her, but I couldn't find a smaller one that wasn't too small for her.  We did make it work, but I hated it.  

Carol came for her lesson, and tacked up Medina.  She was in the indoor arena before me.  She mentioned groundwork and that she'd gotten confused about it / forgotten what it's for.  My trainer worked with her on that a bit, and she pointed out that the whole point of groundwork was to get something that a person would like to ride / be okay riding.  It was a good reminder for me as to why we do groundwork.  

For example, you can use it to check out how your horse is doing before you mount.  Can you move the hindquarters?  The forehand?  Stop them?  Back them?  Are they sassy?  If all checks out, then you can mount.  

Mariah stood still for me to mount, although I wasn't sure she was going to at first.  I started out by walking around the arena on a long rein with no contact.  My trainer didn't give me anything to do right away.  

However, I don't think we'd even made it through the first lap before Mariah started blowing like horses do when they're relaxing.  My trainer was like, "Look how early she's blowing!"  Such a huge improvement for dragon Mariah ;)  

We walked about two laps before my trainer told me to start turning circles to the inside, wherever I wanted to.  If she felt good going one direction, I could change directions.  

Like on Lily, I really focused on using my body as much as possible.  Mariah was calm and chill about it, so we made a couple circles going clockwise that I felt were good.  Then I changed direction.  

Going to the left, or counter-clockwise, wasn't as great.  See, the first half the circle would go well, but I'd have trouble on the second half getting her to stay the circle and not drift to the outside.  It's that drifting tendency of hers popping up again.  I had to be watchful about it.

My trainer asked me how she felt straightness wise, was one side more crooked than the other?  I told her that while she wasn't very crooked, it was harder to get her to turn to the left / stay on the circle.  

She said that was good to know, and that I could pick up a trot now while doing the same exercise of making circles.  

Of course, Mariah shot off into trot as per usual, but so long as I kept my legs under me, things went well.  She kept a good, steady trot, that was neither too fast nor two slow.  I didn't feel out of control, it was quite lovely.  

The circles were very nice too, she makes them so well now.  Like, she's not spinning out to the outside all the time.  Makes my job a lot easier.  

Honestly, I don't have much to say about it because everything went so well, textbook example type stuff.  My trainer didn't really have anything to say about it either.  She said something like, "I like it when I don't have anything to say about what you're doing."  Such an amazing compliment. 

At one point during the ride, I don't remember when, my trainer asked me how she felt.  I said she felt really good, and my trainer said she was happier.  She really is happier, not fussing and wringing around in anxiety all the time.  Remember the first ride I had on her, where I had to do all of those one-rein stops?  

We trotted for awhile, doing those circles, and then took a walk break.  By that time I think Carol had finished with groundwork and was bridling Medina to ride.  My trainer said that after she mounted I could pick up a canter on Mariah.

My trainer told me that Mariah can now canter so slowly she flirts with the line of trotting.  If she dropped into trot, my trainer didn't want me to be right on her about it, like I would be with other horses.  And if she was like, "Oh, whoops, we were cantering, sorry, my bad" and wanted to canter, then to let her.  This was so that she wouldn't think everything she did was the wrong thing.  

Picking up the canter wasn't too hard, although I think in the first transition to it Mariah threw a little bit of a hissy fit.  But when I asked her to slow down, she listened and slowed down.  I'm also getting better about knowing when she's speeding up and catching her, I've got some feel for that now.  

So, we just cantered a couple of laps.  I hated the feeling that I was getting of being bounced out of the saddle and tried to relax so that wouldn't happen.  My trainer pointed this out to me and told me to bend my knees and lighten my foot in the stirrup so I wasn't bracing against it. 

But yeah, overall, everything went well, although Mariah never got quite slow enough she dropped into trot.  We cantered to the right first, and took a break in between.  

This time, in cantering to the left, my trainer told me that if I felt like I could do some trot-canter transitions, to go ahead and do that.  But if I didn't, to leave it alone and we'd work on that later.  Apparently, Mariah's doing really well in the trot and really well in the canter, but she still has problems with the transitions between them, so we need to keep working on that.

Also, my trainer mentioned that when I was asking Mariah to slow her canter down, I needed to sink more into the saddle and let gravity pull me down, instead of bracing against the stirrup and kinda standing up from the saddle.  

Cantering going to the left wasn't as nice as cantering to the right, but it was still good.  I could slow Mariah down when I needed to, but when I went to ask for trot, it was like I ran into a brick wall of resistance.  So I decided to leave it alone for now.

Mariah felt like she was putting so much weight in my hand, especially since the reins were so short.  But I didn't want to lengthen them, and her think she could just pull and I'd give her rein.

We took another break, during which I actually stopped Mariah so I could watch my trainer, who was working with Rugar.  My trainer was demonstrating something for Carol, and I wanted to see it.  

See, the problem with Rugar is that his energy just kinda shoots up and out the front.  He likes to have his head way high in the air and run around hollow.  

To counter this, my trainer would lean forward in a sort of half seat and put her hands down low by his shoulders.  This way, when he'd try to raise his head so high, he'd 'hit the ceiling' and be fighting.  He didn't like this, and was tossing his head around in agitation for awhile.  

See, instead of using draw reins, or a harsh bit, this is what my trainer does.  When he finally gave in and stopped fighting, he was in a nice, on the bit frame.  My trainer was forcing or putting him there, she was making it the easiest place for him to be.  Of course, he'd keep that for a few strides and then go back to fighting, but gradually he kept it for longer and longer.  

My trainer was showing Carol through this that, while she might tell Carol to raise her hands and sit straight up, there was still a use for low hands and leaning forward.  It's just that they're tools that aren't used that often.  And of course, my trainer won't always ride Rugar this way.  

Anyhow, after that, it was time for trot-canter transitions with Mariah.  My trainer had mercy on me and said she'd wait till next week to make me jump XD  She told me to use circles as often as I needed to make Mariah keep the trot instead of running off into canter again.  And to not go back to canter until she had a nice trot.  

This was probably the hardest and trickiest part of the ride.  Many times I felt like Mariah had a brick wall for a mouth.  And I did lots of circles.  

At one point my trainer told me to circle, and when I did, Carol was standing pretty close with Medina.  But I kept my cool and we made the circle without running into them XD  I did hear my trainer telling Carol that she about had a heart attack though when I got so close XD  Carol apparently didn't even flinch XD  

So yes, Mariah did fight me on the transitions.  I tried to make sure that I used my core muscles to help resist her and sat deep in the saddle.  Circles were very helpful in making sure that she came down to trot and stayed in trot.  They're much more useful now that Mariah doesn't spin out on them.

When it came time to come down to the walk, if I remember right, my trainer had me make a couple of trot circles to calm Mariah down and help her chill out before bringing her to walk.  

My trainer then had me come over to the circle of poles and walk Mariah around it for a break.  Again, I used my body to steer as much as possible, and it wasn't hard.  

I don't remember at what point in the ride my trainer said this, so I'll put it here.  She mentioned that before our three week break, I'd had trouble with wanting to pull / hang on the inside rein.  But now, she said, it looked like that was no longer a problem, which she was pleased to see.  

I hadn't known that was a problem, but what I had known was a problem and what I had been working on, was using my body more than my reins to steer and being straight.  I'd been really focusing on that with Shorty, and so I wonder if that had something to do with me not hanging on the inside rein anymore.  

My trainer was also using the circle of poles for Rugar as me and Mariah were using it as well.  Lol, I was a little worried about it but we never ran into each other.  

My next exercise, and my last one, was to do sitting trot on Mariah over the circle of poles.  Before, it would have been nearly impossible to get Mariah to be that slow and stay that slow.  

But we went into trot, and once I figured out what speed I wanted / my trainer wanted, she actually stayed there for the most part.  She wasn't constantly trying to speed up, and I was able to correct her when she did.  

I do feel my sitting trot was terrible on her, like I was lurching around like a sack of potatoes.  But I tried my best and did do better near the end.  I remembered to roll with her from side to side.  It's like her sides swing out, see, and you have to go from side to side with them.

My trainer said we wanted this to be a 'no big deal' thing for Mariah, and it was for the most part.  

We did sitting trot both directions, and that was pretty much it for the day.  Carol also had a good lesson, she got to canter on Medina.  My trainer told me that I could walk around and do some other things on Mariah if I wanted to.   

My trainer and Carol mentioned again that they want me to ride Medina.  Carol asked me if I'd ever ridden a Foxtrotter.  I hadn't, but told her I had ridden a Tennessee Walker.  

Mariah was being so calm, good, and even stretching a little that I got off pretty soon afterwards.  

While putting Mariah up / after putting her up, I watched my trainer work with Rugar.

She was using shoulder in on the circle of poles, which is a pretty advanced exercise, especially for a horse like Rugar.  The reason she was using it was to convince him to give his feet to her.  For whatever reason, as she said, "He'd rather die than step over the pole with his left foot first."  And that seemed accurate.

He did not want to step over the pole with his right leg first.  By using shoulder in, my trainer was turning his left foot right in front of the pole, so that the easiest thing for him to do would be to step over it with that foot.  But of course, he refused to do it multiple times.

But my trainer was persistent.  And when he finally stepped over a pole with his left front hoof, she let him have a break immediately.  She said that when a horse is really struggling with something, the moment they get it right she stops.  Now, if the horse isn't struggling so much, she might go on, but for Rugar, stopping right away was what he needed to get it right.  

She says that if he'll just give in and give up his obsession with stepping over the pole with his right hoof, life will be much easier for him.  She wants him to give his feet to her, and to trust her to put his feet in the right place.  

So yeah, that was interesting.  Rugar, I believe, along with Bluebonnet, is destined to also become a lesson horse.  I wonder if I'll end up riding either one of them.    

Oh, I haven't told you what happened to Otis!  During my lesson, my trainer told me.  She said that he's going to be sold to a couple who want him for their boy.  

I always knew there was a chance Otis was going to be sold.  He's seriously such a doll baby, somebody was sure to fall in love with him at some point.  And the home sounds perfect for him. 

He'll be coming back for a few weeks, and then he'll be gone in February.  

I'm not all that sad to see him go, I've never had that much of a connection to him.  But still, it is sad to see another one go.  

Anyhow, it was a good first lesson to come back too :)  

Actual lesson 1/18/2021