Staying focused

The following was shared on one of the few horse blogs I follow, Behind the Bit.



While the information isn't new, it IS a helpful reminder. I'm a pretty focused person, but staying focused on the task at hand can be particularly challenging with an active (understatement), talkative (extreme understatement) 10-year-old boy around! I watched this before riding Horton this morning, had a really good schooling session as a result.

Visiting Camelot, or My Pretty Pony

I felt like a little girl about today, about this trip to visit my horse.

The weather lent a fairytale quality. As we headed westward towards the coast this morning, fog was rolling into the Willamette Valley and shrouding everything in grey. Rick grumbled about the change in the weather; I quietly enjoyed it. I like fog, and am so ready for some moisture in the air, on the ground, on my skin. But as we topped the Coast Range, the grey overhead started breaking up into sparkling sunshine and vibrant blue sky, the air crisp and clean.

The barn where Lance is living is on the near edge of Lincoln City. It is an enviable but underutilized facility sitting on a gorgeous piece of property, owned by a retired doctor and leased by Lance's previous owner.

 And there was my Sir Lancelot, hangin' out in his corner stall overlooking the outdoor arena.

What a beautiful boy – even with a piece of hay sticking out of his mouth!

Rick got right to work, giving Lance a bit of tranquilizer, setting up his equipment and treating the injured tendon. Then he pronounced my horse ready to commence walking 15 minutes a day, starting just as soon as the anesthesia wore off. Even said I could do it from his back if I was feeling brave!

First things first. While Lance "sobered up," I gave him a good grooming, including combing his mane over to the right, removing the tail-bag, brushing and trimming his tail. Then we went for a walk. I mostly hand-walked him and let him graze a bit,

but when he stood so nicely next to the parked horse trailer, I couldn't resist slipping my leg over and riding him around just a wee bit. :-)

You probably can't see how big my grin was!

We left him with hopefully enough HorseGuard and daily wormer (I wormed him with ivermectin first) to last the two weeks until his third and final treatment, grabbed a bite of lunch, and then took advantage of the perfect weather for a short walk down the beach. The only thing that could have made  the day better would have been a ride (on Lance, of course) down the beach!

(I'll post the beach photos on my other blog, since this one is photo-heavy as it is.)

Horton's dead!

Okay, not really, but he sure looked it yesterday afternoon. ;-)

 What self-respecting horse doesn't shake himself off when he gets up? Not that it would have helped much; we are so dry right now that static electricity is at an all-time high.

Enough silliness; we have milestones to celebrate! Last week I put away the lungeline and whip; the mounting block, too. Horton has been so good for so long that there was no need to clutter up the arena with those training tools any longer. He stands quietly and lets me slip into the saddle from the arena fence, and I'd have to look back through my posts to remember the last time he needed remedial lunging. In fact, I've gotten so confident in his improvement that yesterday and today I rode with my spurs while schooling him. Nope, they weren't an issue. (But wearing them sure helped me remember to keep my heels down and away from him!)

"Horton, Horton, I've been thinking

What a fine boy you've become.

And you'll just keep getting better;

Soon you'll go home to your mom."

Forever and two weeks

Can it be that I decided to throw caution (and my heart) to the wind and make Lancelot mine just two short weeks ago today? It seems so much longer ago than that . . . and I guess in some ways (as I have shared) it was.

In two short days I get to see Lance again, when he gets his second shock wave treatment. We're all going along for the ride to Lincoln City – Rick to do the treatment, me to see my horse, Brian to play with his friend (Lance's breeder's daughter). Perhaps it is the anticipation of this event that has stolen some of my momentum with Horton. But starry-eyed over my long-distance romance or not, I need to stay focused on the task at hand, and ride while the sun shines. The days are getting dramatically shorter, and rain is at long last in our forecast by next weekend. It will become a bit more of a challenge to find time to school Horton when I have to fit it in between rain showers as well as homeschooling and such. But fit it in I will; we have a show to prepare for!

Horton got his front shoes reset last week. This time he got custom iron instead of keg shoes, and they really look good. I'm not riding off the property as much as I was with the beginning of both hunting season and scare-the-birds-away-from-the-wine-grapes season, but it is nice to have his front feet protected so that I can.

Already a star...

"I was a good boy, right? I get a cookie, right?" Yes, and yes!

This morning I had the best ride on Horton to date! As always, the better I ride, the better the horse moves.... Seeing my sloppy position on Lance in the photos the trainer took of us awoke me to the bad habits I've fallen into while riding green/rusty horses; since then I've been mentally coaching myself as I ride. I also read something somewhere that reminded me of how useful leg-yields can be. I have been implementing leg-yields in Horton's schooling sessions from the git-go, but only as a simple supplying exercise and not as a tool in improve his contact, self-carriage and canter departs. Today I added trot "snails" (spiraling in from 20m to 10m circles, then leg-yielding back out to 20m) to our work, and they did wonders – that, and riding 20m circles in a leg-yield frame of mind. When I asked for canter, Horton picked it up so sweetly that I almost whooped – and he stayed much softer and rounder in canter than ever before. Yep, he's a star....