Monkey was a dream today, and that isn't appended with "for him, anyway."
We even got praise from Marilyn that didn't end with "for him."
Class was full on counter bends and a few other things today, and Monkey was light, he listened to my leg, he did what I asked when I asked, we didn't have any run aways.... I was so proud!!!
The only issue we had was when we came around by the gate of the indoor arena and they were stacking hay. Apparently, bales of hay are not supposed to fly through the air, and when they do, it's a sign of the apocalypse.
I can't really fault him for that, though. After all, the flying hay bales surprised me a bit as well. Not nearly as much as the instantaneous matter transfer we went through when he saw it, but it did surprise me.
My baby boy is growing up!! *sniffle*
He's even making good progress on learning to work on the lunge line. We've been working on that on Fridays in the round pen, and he's figuring out what I want, and giving it to me. A few more weeks and we can start working outside the round pen, and then when he goes home, we'll be able to work off his young excited lazing around the pasture most of the time energy, before we get on him. Which will be good for Farmmom, she's not as entertained by the battles as I am.
Unless she's watching me get my ass canned. Then she's highly entertained.
I've got my fingers crossed that Monkey continues to behave, so that I can enjoy it for the rest of the semester, because it looks like next semester I'm going to have the filly, and she's looking to promise some interesting battles of her own.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Um...
I'm posting to you now from a neighbor's wireless connection. Which one, I don't know. But my internet has screwed the pooch.
Everything else works, just the net is dead.
I power cycled my wireless router, that's not the problem, and obviously the problem is not in the computer because I can connect to another network fine. I just can't connect to my own.
I would power cycle the cable modem except for one small problem. The fucker has a battery back up, in case of power outage.
And there is no power switch.
So, later today I'll be calling the cable company and seeing what kind of runaround they want to give me today.
*Edit*: Aaaand we're back. No clue what the deal was, but it's working now.
Everything else works, just the net is dead.
I power cycled my wireless router, that's not the problem, and obviously the problem is not in the computer because I can connect to another network fine. I just can't connect to my own.
I would power cycle the cable modem except for one small problem. The fucker has a battery back up, in case of power outage.
And there is no power switch.
So, later today I'll be calling the cable company and seeing what kind of runaround they want to give me today.
*Edit*: Aaaand we're back. No clue what the deal was, but it's working now.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Gorgeous, Just Gorgeous
It is a bee-youtiful day outside. The sun is shining, the wind isn't blowing, and the temperature is actually above requiring a long sleeved shirt.
I've spent this afternoon cleaning out my car to go to Denver tomorrow, since the floorboards and back seat were full of the assorted detritus of... well... life. Working on the road I practically lived in my car, so I got in the habit of just cleaning it out every couple of weeks to dispose of all of the assorted trash and collected items of clothing.
I've done a few quick sweeps lately, but not a real cleaning. This wasn't even a real cleaning, I just removed all of the trash and junk that builds up in my car. I'll go down to the car wash and vaccuum it out later, and if I'm still feeling motivated, I'll wash it. Poor dusty car.
But, in the middle of digging empty water bottles out from under the passenger seat I realized something amazing: I was sweating. In a T-shirt.
Spring is coming. It's not here yet, in my world it isn't officially spring until the first clover is spotted and/or the first shoots of new grass start appearing. Even trees budding is no sure sign in my area, where the trees are never really sure what season it is anyway, and often get buds frozen in January.
Tomorrow we're supposed to approach a record high, the forecast says high seventies. Of course, the temp is supposed to drop Sunday, with a chance of snow Sunday night. But the weather people say it will start warming up again Monday.
Like I said, it's not spring yet, but it's getting there, and in the meantime we've got a few beautiful days here and there to enjoy.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go bask in the sun.
I've spent this afternoon cleaning out my car to go to Denver tomorrow, since the floorboards and back seat were full of the assorted detritus of... well... life. Working on the road I practically lived in my car, so I got in the habit of just cleaning it out every couple of weeks to dispose of all of the assorted trash and collected items of clothing.
I've done a few quick sweeps lately, but not a real cleaning. This wasn't even a real cleaning, I just removed all of the trash and junk that builds up in my car. I'll go down to the car wash and vaccuum it out later, and if I'm still feeling motivated, I'll wash it. Poor dusty car.
But, in the middle of digging empty water bottles out from under the passenger seat I realized something amazing: I was sweating. In a T-shirt.
Spring is coming. It's not here yet, in my world it isn't officially spring until the first clover is spotted and/or the first shoots of new grass start appearing. Even trees budding is no sure sign in my area, where the trees are never really sure what season it is anyway, and often get buds frozen in January.
Tomorrow we're supposed to approach a record high, the forecast says high seventies. Of course, the temp is supposed to drop Sunday, with a chance of snow Sunday night. But the weather people say it will start warming up again Monday.
Like I said, it's not spring yet, but it's getting there, and in the meantime we've got a few beautiful days here and there to enjoy.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go bask in the sun.
When Stupidity Attacks
So, yesterday, we're smack in the middle of class, with JJ instructing (which is a completely different experience than Marlyn) working on counter-bends.
I'll step back a bit and explain. A counter bend is when you turn your horse in one direction with his head turned in the opposite direction. This may sound weird but when you're training for spins, or pivots, you want your horse to step across himself in the front. By turning his head to the outside of a turn you lift up the outside shoulder and he starts to step across a little naturally. This just shows him how you want his body to move.
The beginning of training for a counter bend is being able to turn your horse's head to the side while walking in a straight line. That's what we were working on. Monkey wasn't quite getting it, being on the fence and having me ask him to turn his head toward the fence (to keep him from turning and reinforce the idea of "keep walking forward") made him think I wanted a roll back for a while. I was keeping a strangle hold on my patience and just concentrating on keeping asking him, and praising him when he did the right thing.
All of a sudden, as I'm leaning forward to praise him (which, at the beginning of training for any new concept is not a simple stroke and pat, but one hand on either side of his neck and a vigorous rub, a "good boy, that's it!" and a double pat. This strategy leaves no doubt for him as to whether he's done the right thing. Maybe some people can get by with just releasing pressure, Monkey needs something a little more demonstrative.) Anyway, all of a sudden he jerks into a trot.
I look back, and there's a girl at the position which, previous to Monkey's sudden speed increase, would have been right behind me. Now, Monkey was walking slower than usual, because he was thinking, and because he needed to coordinate with the new idea. No big deal. Except that the horse behind us was a faster walker than Monkey at that point, and his rider, instead of stepping off the rail and going around, had allowed him to push right up on Monkey's butt. Thus, when she released his head, his nose was basically checking Monkey's prostate. Which Monkey might have taken exception to, but he didn't have time, because that horse just went right ahead and nipped Monkey to get him to move.
It worked, and if Monkey hadn't been feeling fairly level-headed at that point, I might have gotten flying lessons. I gotta say if someone bit me on the ass with no warning in a public place, I might do something a little more extreme than just jogging away.
Why is it, I wonder, that people can't seem to understand simple concepts like this? It's easy, folks. If your horse is faster than the horse ahead of you, go to the inside, go around, and then go back to the rail. Even break into a higher gait if the gait is not the major concern for the exercise. Yes, we were in the indoor which crams a lot of us into frankly too little space (come on, remodel! More on that in another post) but still, you can make it work. Don't let stupidity get other people hurt.
Don't get me wrong folks I'm not the only person that these things happen to, but when they happen to other people, I'm generally not looking in the right direction to catch the whole thing, to tell which person is really at fault and what all happened, so I try to keep an open mind.
Working with JJ is always a switch, when he wants to teach us something he uses one of his horses, and demonstrates. He also demonstrates what we look like when we do something wrong, hand positions, seat positions, and all. Which can get pretty entertaining.
I love Marilyn to death, but she doesn't ride with us while she's teaching unless she's got a horse to work with for a client, and sometimes not even then. Last semester she had a horse she rode a few times, called Jabar because he was freaking huge. The problem Marilyn sees is that she has problems keeping track of everyone enough without adding her own horse to the mix, so she has a sophomore work study student to demonstrate for her. Which doesn't always work out the way she'd like, because that student's horse is usually just as green as any of ours.
It's a switch to work with JJ, and I enjoy it just as much as working with Marilyn, but not everyone does. JJ has more experience with the class situation, and keeps an eye on everyone, and isn't shy about letting people know when they're doing something wrong. Marilyn doesn't always catch things that JJ does. Which makes the students that don't get corrected as much with Marilyn kind of cranky. Monkey and I rarely get corrected with Marilyn anymore, but JJ corrected us a few times, which I actually appreciated. It will make us even better.
I'll step back a bit and explain. A counter bend is when you turn your horse in one direction with his head turned in the opposite direction. This may sound weird but when you're training for spins, or pivots, you want your horse to step across himself in the front. By turning his head to the outside of a turn you lift up the outside shoulder and he starts to step across a little naturally. This just shows him how you want his body to move.
The beginning of training for a counter bend is being able to turn your horse's head to the side while walking in a straight line. That's what we were working on. Monkey wasn't quite getting it, being on the fence and having me ask him to turn his head toward the fence (to keep him from turning and reinforce the idea of "keep walking forward") made him think I wanted a roll back for a while. I was keeping a strangle hold on my patience and just concentrating on keeping asking him, and praising him when he did the right thing.
All of a sudden, as I'm leaning forward to praise him (which, at the beginning of training for any new concept is not a simple stroke and pat, but one hand on either side of his neck and a vigorous rub, a "good boy, that's it!" and a double pat. This strategy leaves no doubt for him as to whether he's done the right thing. Maybe some people can get by with just releasing pressure, Monkey needs something a little more demonstrative.) Anyway, all of a sudden he jerks into a trot.
I look back, and there's a girl at the position which, previous to Monkey's sudden speed increase, would have been right behind me. Now, Monkey was walking slower than usual, because he was thinking, and because he needed to coordinate with the new idea. No big deal. Except that the horse behind us was a faster walker than Monkey at that point, and his rider, instead of stepping off the rail and going around, had allowed him to push right up on Monkey's butt. Thus, when she released his head, his nose was basically checking Monkey's prostate. Which Monkey might have taken exception to, but he didn't have time, because that horse just went right ahead and nipped Monkey to get him to move.
It worked, and if Monkey hadn't been feeling fairly level-headed at that point, I might have gotten flying lessons. I gotta say if someone bit me on the ass with no warning in a public place, I might do something a little more extreme than just jogging away.
Why is it, I wonder, that people can't seem to understand simple concepts like this? It's easy, folks. If your horse is faster than the horse ahead of you, go to the inside, go around, and then go back to the rail. Even break into a higher gait if the gait is not the major concern for the exercise. Yes, we were in the indoor which crams a lot of us into frankly too little space (come on, remodel! More on that in another post) but still, you can make it work. Don't let stupidity get other people hurt.
Don't get me wrong folks I'm not the only person that these things happen to, but when they happen to other people, I'm generally not looking in the right direction to catch the whole thing, to tell which person is really at fault and what all happened, so I try to keep an open mind.
Working with JJ is always a switch, when he wants to teach us something he uses one of his horses, and demonstrates. He also demonstrates what we look like when we do something wrong, hand positions, seat positions, and all. Which can get pretty entertaining.
I love Marilyn to death, but she doesn't ride with us while she's teaching unless she's got a horse to work with for a client, and sometimes not even then. Last semester she had a horse she rode a few times, called Jabar because he was freaking huge. The problem Marilyn sees is that she has problems keeping track of everyone enough without adding her own horse to the mix, so she has a sophomore work study student to demonstrate for her. Which doesn't always work out the way she'd like, because that student's horse is usually just as green as any of ours.
It's a switch to work with JJ, and I enjoy it just as much as working with Marilyn, but not everyone does. JJ has more experience with the class situation, and keeps an eye on everyone, and isn't shy about letting people know when they're doing something wrong. Marilyn doesn't always catch things that JJ does. Which makes the students that don't get corrected as much with Marilyn kind of cranky. Monkey and I rarely get corrected with Marilyn anymore, but JJ corrected us a few times, which I actually appreciated. It will make us even better.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
A Few Things
First off, ya'll remember the story I posted up here last? The one with all the pecker jokes? I'm revising that, filling in some blanks, polishing it up, and preparing for our Administrative Visitor in Creative Writing.
See, the school wants to see that the instructor is doing her job, and she decided the best way to do that is to have everyone give a reading. And, after a set of instructions that included "I will not tell you what you can and cannot say. Just remember the audience. If you're comfortable saying fuck in front of an administrator, then go for it," I decided that it was my duty to represent freedom of writing.
Besides, I've been wanting to revise that one since I wrote it.
Second, thank you all for your kind suggestions on saddle makers. I really appreciate the input!
However, guys, please understand, I can't go to Oregon, or California, for a saddle. I just can't. I don't have the money for the visit for the initial fitting, on top of the cost of the saddle itself, let alone enough to check the fit as the saddle is built. Since fit is one of my major concerns, I want to be able to check on that.
I have been watching tack sales and farm sales, too, but I run across the same problem. The vast majority of people just don't ride a saddle under fifteen and a half inches. Which means the sales are chock full of saddles that size and larger, but once again, not in the size I need. I have found some youth saddles, but that comes back to the working weight problem. I have examined options that don't cost an arm and a leg, folks, it just comes right back to the fact that short of a miracle, some other tiny person deciding to not ride anymore and giving up their custom saddle, I'm not gonna be that lucky.
Farmmom joked that I should run a Buy Farmgirl A New Saddle fund raiser. Frankly, good people, I'm considering it. I was looking at my synthetic yesterday and the poor thing is getting a little worn. It just wasn't built to do as much work as I've been putting it to. It's not falling apart yet, but it is showing some real signs of wear.
So, before I start asking ya'll for money, I'm asking your opinion. If I were to go ahead and set up a Paypal account and/or provide a mailing address, would you donate? And, whether you would or not, would you feel it was a good cause? Or sheer personal greed?
Please folks, I'm not asking for money yet, I just want to know the general feeling on such a donation drive. If it's mostly negative, I won't ask ya'll to give up your hard-earned cash.
If it's mostly positive though, I might be able to get the saddle a lot sooner than if I have to save little by little. Frankly, with the cash flow I have right now, it's looking like I'm going to graduate before I can afford it, with no income other than my student aid during the semester, and having to save a certain amount from any work I do in the summers to help with expenses during the school year.
So please, comment here, email me, let me know your opinion on the subject!
See, the school wants to see that the instructor is doing her job, and she decided the best way to do that is to have everyone give a reading. And, after a set of instructions that included "I will not tell you what you can and cannot say. Just remember the audience. If you're comfortable saying fuck in front of an administrator, then go for it," I decided that it was my duty to represent freedom of writing.
Besides, I've been wanting to revise that one since I wrote it.
Second, thank you all for your kind suggestions on saddle makers. I really appreciate the input!
However, guys, please understand, I can't go to Oregon, or California, for a saddle. I just can't. I don't have the money for the visit for the initial fitting, on top of the cost of the saddle itself, let alone enough to check the fit as the saddle is built. Since fit is one of my major concerns, I want to be able to check on that.
I have been watching tack sales and farm sales, too, but I run across the same problem. The vast majority of people just don't ride a saddle under fifteen and a half inches. Which means the sales are chock full of saddles that size and larger, but once again, not in the size I need. I have found some youth saddles, but that comes back to the working weight problem. I have examined options that don't cost an arm and a leg, folks, it just comes right back to the fact that short of a miracle, some other tiny person deciding to not ride anymore and giving up their custom saddle, I'm not gonna be that lucky.
Farmmom joked that I should run a Buy Farmgirl A New Saddle fund raiser. Frankly, good people, I'm considering it. I was looking at my synthetic yesterday and the poor thing is getting a little worn. It just wasn't built to do as much work as I've been putting it to. It's not falling apart yet, but it is showing some real signs of wear.
So, before I start asking ya'll for money, I'm asking your opinion. If I were to go ahead and set up a Paypal account and/or provide a mailing address, would you donate? And, whether you would or not, would you feel it was a good cause? Or sheer personal greed?
Please folks, I'm not asking for money yet, I just want to know the general feeling on such a donation drive. If it's mostly negative, I won't ask ya'll to give up your hard-earned cash.
If it's mostly positive though, I might be able to get the saddle a lot sooner than if I have to save little by little. Frankly, with the cash flow I have right now, it's looking like I'm going to graduate before I can afford it, with no income other than my student aid during the semester, and having to save a certain amount from any work I do in the summers to help with expenses during the school year.
So please, comment here, email me, let me know your opinion on the subject!
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
These Circles.... Are ROUND!!!
It's magic. It's a miracle. It's the circle, done right.
Yesterday, Monkey was being a jerkoff right off the bat. I knew he would be, I didn't get him worked very well Sunday, and the wind was blowing like crazy.
I got on him before class to see how much of a jerkoff he was going to be. The answer was a big one.
So, we went to the round pen. I worked him pretty hard, to get all of the energy he was using to be a brat off so that he'd pay attention, and then we went back to the indoor arena in time to catch the beginning of class.
He behaved much better after that.
Since we'd reviewed the rules for National Reining Horse Association competitions yesterday morning in Eval, Marilyn decided to do some circles and stops. First we had circles, small circles at the lope to either direction with a simple lead change in between.
Monkey actually made round circles!! Without a huge fight! I was so proud. The only little snag we had was that he didn't want to get up into the lope on the second circle, and I had to whallop his sides.
By the time we did stops he had his second wind back again, we did a couple at the trot and a couple at the lope. Trotting... well, he kind of sucked. He hasn't learned to bring his back feet up underneath him on a stop from the trot. But he stopped fairly light, at least. The lope, he did pretty good on the first one, when I stopped him with both hands. The second one, I tried him one handed and he tried to peel off on me.
I'm trying to ride him neck-reined at least part of the time, for two reasons. I worked really hard to get him started on neck reining last semester and I've been neglecting it a bit this semester, and he's forgetting what he learned. And, because neck reining gives him looser reins, by definition, which will help soften his mouth up as he's not as heavy a contact all the time as with direct reining.
Mostly though, I'm just glad he decided to behave. Hopefully he got enough energy burned off yesterday that I won't have to work him before I ride today, but I've got more time between classes today, so I should be able to go out pretty early and get his stall stripped and re-bedded (I would have done it yesterday, but the shavings would have blown away before I could get them to the barn.) Then, if I'm still early, I can get him warmed up before class enough that I'll know if I need to round pen him or not.
I don't think he wants to make Mommy mad enough to get off again though. He never wins, I always make him do something properly before I get off, even to go to the round pen. But, he might be learning that being an utter brat when he knows better only gets him a lot more sweat than he would have had otherwise.
One can always hope, anyway.
Yesterday, Monkey was being a jerkoff right off the bat. I knew he would be, I didn't get him worked very well Sunday, and the wind was blowing like crazy.
I got on him before class to see how much of a jerkoff he was going to be. The answer was a big one.
So, we went to the round pen. I worked him pretty hard, to get all of the energy he was using to be a brat off so that he'd pay attention, and then we went back to the indoor arena in time to catch the beginning of class.
He behaved much better after that.
Since we'd reviewed the rules for National Reining Horse Association competitions yesterday morning in Eval, Marilyn decided to do some circles and stops. First we had circles, small circles at the lope to either direction with a simple lead change in between.
Monkey actually made round circles!! Without a huge fight! I was so proud. The only little snag we had was that he didn't want to get up into the lope on the second circle, and I had to whallop his sides.
By the time we did stops he had his second wind back again, we did a couple at the trot and a couple at the lope. Trotting... well, he kind of sucked. He hasn't learned to bring his back feet up underneath him on a stop from the trot. But he stopped fairly light, at least. The lope, he did pretty good on the first one, when I stopped him with both hands. The second one, I tried him one handed and he tried to peel off on me.
I'm trying to ride him neck-reined at least part of the time, for two reasons. I worked really hard to get him started on neck reining last semester and I've been neglecting it a bit this semester, and he's forgetting what he learned. And, because neck reining gives him looser reins, by definition, which will help soften his mouth up as he's not as heavy a contact all the time as with direct reining.
Mostly though, I'm just glad he decided to behave. Hopefully he got enough energy burned off yesterday that I won't have to work him before I ride today, but I've got more time between classes today, so I should be able to go out pretty early and get his stall stripped and re-bedded (I would have done it yesterday, but the shavings would have blown away before I could get them to the barn.) Then, if I'm still early, I can get him warmed up before class enough that I'll know if I need to round pen him or not.
I don't think he wants to make Mommy mad enough to get off again though. He never wins, I always make him do something properly before I get off, even to go to the round pen. But, he might be learning that being an utter brat when he knows better only gets him a lot more sweat than he would have had otherwise.
One can always hope, anyway.
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