Skeeter's Field Trip

Colorado Mustang Days begins exactly two weeks from today.

My neighbor owns a riding school and has kindly agreed to let me use her arena in preparation for CMD. Today has been absolutely beautiful, so it was a perfect time to get to work. Skeets hasn't been ridden in almost a month (again). Our last ride was 1/29/16, but she has been so good. I haven't had much time other than just loving on her - no actual work has occurred, so I wasn't sure how today would go.

She was such a pro today. I spent some time grooming her while purred like a cat. She didn't actually purr, but if she was a cat, she would have been purring. Despite how ugly her mane is, I've decided to just leave it. She's a mustang - her mane doesn't have to be perfect. We did some circling work and I picked up her feet. She tried to tell me she didn't remember how to pick them up, but I reminded her that she did know how to do it and she finally picked them up nicely.

I tacked her up and headed out to my neighbor's. We'd visited once before, but just for a few minutes. I anticipated that she'd be distracted, so we did more circling work in the neighbor's driveway until she remembered I was the boss.

Once in the arena, we did even more circling work and direction changes until her brain engaged. My neighbor teaches young jumpers (kids), so there were some low jumps set up in the arena that we used as obstacles. She did a great job walking over the ground poles and a couple of the poles that were maybe 6-8" off the ground, so we went to some that were a little higher, maybe 10-12" and she dragged her back hooves over them. She didn't knock them over, but she didn't fully pick up her back feet either.

I knew I was stretching her a bit, but I then had her walk over the taller poles. She got her front hooves over well, but knocked them over with her back. I set up the poles and we tried it again. She dragged her back hooves again and knocked it down, so I set it up again and just left it.

I had gone over with the intention of riding, but knowing that if Skeets was not behaving or I felt in any way that it would be a bad idea, I would just abort and do in-hand work instead.

She was being so good that I went ahead and mounted up. I only rode about ten minutes, but it was a good ten minutes.

Jay's New Saddle (Maybe)

My friend, Mrs Mom/Momma Bear/whatevershescallingherselfthisweek, has a bunch of tack that she's trying to get rid of for a friend of hers. Jay and Copper don't have a saddle, so I thought I'd do the friend of a friend thing and buy one of the used ones. She had an Aussie that looked like it would fit both Copper and Jay, so I bought it and had it shipped from Georgia to Colorado (God, the shipping was painful).

I've never bought a saddle in my life, now that I think about it. I've always used Mom's hand-me-downs from the livery. Hmm.

Anyway, when the UPS truck pulled up this morning, we were both pretty excited to see Jay's new-to-him saddle in real life.

The box was so big it almost didn't fit through our doorways.

The saddle looks to be in good shape, though there are straps that I don't know anything about.

Please excuse the cat-damaged couch.

At one point, I laid down a strap I had no clue about, shot a picture off to Mrs Mom and asked, "what the fuck this is?"

Apparently it's an over-girth. I've heard of 'em, not sure I've ever dealt with one by itself. Thank God for YouTube - I managed to find answers to all my questions about this crazy saddle and am now feeling much more confident.

Jay will take it with him to his lesson on Saturday to see if it fits Copper. If it does, we're golden. If not, Mr Mrs Mom wants it, so it'll get shipped back to Georgia.

And in other news ...

Gizmo has claimed the box as her own.

Jay's 4th Lesson

Since Jay and I have such weird opposite schedules, there's not always someone available to video his lessons. The weather has also slowed down Copper's training, so though he's been at Jessica's quite a while, not every day is a work day.

For Jay's 3rd lesson, Jay got to work in the round pen and on the lead line and then got to lean over Copper bareback. That lesson happened before we went to SHOT Show in January. Then the weather and work schedules screwed everything up again and Jay wasn't able to get to his 4th lesson until February 13th - almost a month later. I, unfortunately, had to work, but Jay was able to talk his brother into going to video tape his lesson.

Things are going well. Jay's a bit tentative around Copper, which makes Copper nervous, and it starts a whole cycle, so Jessica's suggestion is that Jay act silly around him - do random things when they're leading. You know, be obnoxious like Grandpa Bill.


(Warning: the wind noise is really bad, so watch with the sound off.)

At the end of the lesson, Jay stepped up into the stirrup! Copper has been ridden by Jessica and her student, but Jay's getting closer and closer to his first ride too! It's pretty exciting to see the progression.

On Monday (2/22), Jay had another quick lesson, in which Jessica had him doing all of the work with Copper from beginning to end (no video). They ended the session with Jay sitting astride Copper for the first time. I'm so sad I wasn't there to see it (stupid adulting). He's got another lesson scheduled for Saturday - maybe he'll get to take a few steps at that point. I'll be working again, so I'll miss it (again), but I can't wait to hear how it goes.

Jessica and Jay have decided that Copper is going to stay at her place until the morning we leave for Colorado Mustang Days. Jessica thinks it would be too much stress for him to go home for a week, only to have his world uprooted again - plus that gives her an extra week or so with him.

CMD is coming up so fast! Jay's decided to do his classes in-hand with Copper and I'll ride in my classes, unless we just fall apart. The beauty of the open CMD classes is that everyone understands the point we're starting from and is so supportive. We're both just going for the experience.

Grandpa Bill's Turn

Bill has been on Skeeter before - last year when we were just getting her used to having weight on her back - but no one has ridden Skeeter other than me since she came back from Jessica's.

Mom really wanted to ride, but she's having trouble with one of her hips and decided to wait until after she sees the orthopod on Thursday.

When I dismounted, Skeeter was still doing so well, I asked Bill if he wanted to ride and he jumped at the chance.



I was so proud of her!

Breakthrough!

The weather was gorgeous on Friday - 58*F, sun, and no wind! I had to get in the pen and work with Skeeter. The constant sun/cold/sun/cold had made sheets of ice outside of the pen, so surprisingly the pen had the best footing.

I hadn't been up on Skeeter in a while - about a month. It's been a long time. I had intended to ride her the day we fell apart, and that had been a couple of weeks since our previous ride. I was absolutely determined to get up, even if was only to flex her each way. Things on the ground went so well that I hopped up and we rode around the pen for a little bit. She's quieter with the combo bit than with the snaffle and much more responsive to it. When I dismounted, I was on cloud nine! It was by far the best work day we'd had in a very long time.

Saturday was supposed to be our last nice day for a while, so Mom planned on coming down. After only one day of riding in the pen I knew I'd get bored in no time, so I spent Friday night plotting ways to make it more interesting.

We have a big pallet that we'd been planning on using for a bridge, so I knew I'd pull that out to walk over. Then I started thinking about the scraps we have around the house and came up with some PVC pipes. They aren't very long, but I could pound them into the ground and have 'poles' to work on turning. I was starting to get excited.

When Mom and Bill got to our place on Saturday, I remembered we had some wood things that could be used to hold trot poles, but I didn't have any poles. But we do still have the long 2x4s that we used to extend the pens to 6' tall.

In no time, between Mom, Bill, Jay and I, we'd constructed a make-shift obstacle course. I caught Skeeter and walked her through it.

(She looks cresty, but it's her mane growing back. She rubbed chunks of her mane off on the feeder while at Jessica's.)

She did pretty good, so it was time to mount up and RIDE! :)

Doing It My Way, Part II

I had realized the night before that I was trying to be someone I wasn't and that was killing my confidence. I was constantly second-guessing myself, wondering if I was doing it "right".

I woke up excited to work Skeeter. We didn't have a lot of time, but I was going to work her by my rules.

Holy cow, what a difference a day (and a change in attitude) makes. My confidence came flooding back and Skeeter snapped right to.

Julie always says to use the amount of pressure that motivates change. I was trying to be nice and quiet, with very subtle cues, but that wasn't cutting it. Once I went back to what I know I felt so much better.

I asked, expected her to do what I asked and if she didn't, I immediately escalated. For example, she's a bitch about backing. She would evade the correction by just raising her head without moving her feet. However, once I changed my attitude she didn't even think about evading. I gave the lead rope a slight wiggle to ask her to back and she didn't, so I immediately escalated and told her to move with a big, scary correction. After the first correction, it took just a wiggle of the rope to get her to back up. After that, all I had to do was wiggle my finger without moving the rope.

We did circling work (again, I don't think we'll ever be done with that), lots of change of direction, backing, and standing ground tied. She's by no means perfect after one session with the "new" me, but leaps and bounds better than with the "faux" me.

It was a much shorter session than the day before, but when we ended both of us were in a much better place mentally. I'm actually looking forward to working with her again. I hadn't realized that I was dreading working with her before, but now I realize how much my lack of confidence was weighing on me.

Doing It My Way, Part I

I started the New Year determined to make headway with Skeeter. That sounds weird, because she's green broke, but she's still got so much to learn (as do I).

We had a break in the weather on January 2nd and we got to work. It was awful. Not a damn thing went correctly. There are two things I despise in horses: pushiness and being food driven. Skeeter was both on the 2nd.

I tried to work through her pushiness and keep her head out of the dead grass. For God's sake, she has a 1,200# round bale all to herself, she does not need to graze. I tried to stay calm, keep my cues clear and work through it, all the while seething. Eventually, through a lot of ground work, I got her paying attention to me and decided to bridle her and go for a ride.

On New Year's Eve I had changed out her bit and bridle to Estes' old bridle and Skeeter's new Myler combo bit. She had done beautifully with it - I worked her over the withers and she gave to pressure beautifully. The bit sat nicely in her mouth and she was much quieter with it than she was with the snaffle.

She doesn't look so thrilled, but she's a mare.

Since she had handled her new bridle so well, I didn't anticipate the fit she threw about having it put back on. It's not like she threw a huge fit, but Jessica has her so well trained that I was surprised she tried to toss her head up. She thought she might get away with it, but her mommy has bridled some of the worst horses around, so she lost and had to wear her pretty bridle.

I worked a bit more on ground work and then decided to mount up. I still can't find my damn stump so off to the trailer we went. And then her brain fell out her butt again and she forgot how to line up at the trailer. I continued to try to channel Jessica and stay calm with clear cues. Didn't work. I got frustrated because I figured I was doing something wrong and decided to walk her over to a pile of pallets, intending to use them as my mounting block.

Skeeter lined up beautifully, so I shortened her left rein a bit to tip her head toward me as I mounted. Just as I put my left foot in the stirrup, she decided that by tipping her nose to the left I must have wanted her up on the pallets with me, so up she came.

I'm not even kidding. I went from, "I'm really trying hard not to be pissed as hell at you" to laughing my ass off in about half a second. I backed her down from the pallets and lined her up again, chastising her to behave herself so I could mount up. Again, just as I got my foot in the stirrup, she stepped up on the pallets. It was not so funny the second time and my frustration meter skyrocketed.

I decided someone was trying to tell me that riding wasn't going to happen, so I backed her back down off of the pallets and we did more groundwork until I could find a decent stopping point.

When I turned her back out into her pen, she seemed as frustrated and relieved as I was that we were done.

I stomped into the house, absolutely livid with both of us. It took a while for me to calm down, but once I did, I realized I was trying to be someone I wasn't.

Skeeter knows what to do - she's fully trained. Green, but trained.

I mulled it over throughout the day and realized that I'm not Jessica, I can't be her and the harder I tried the more frustrated I got.


Eventually it dawned on me that I just have to do me. Me is a bit more abrasive than Jessica, a bit more impatient, but I like to think I'm still fair. I never get after a horse just because - I ask them once, give them a chance to respond, and then tell them.

By the time I went to bed, I was feeling much better and much more confident.