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Apr. 24th, 2010 09:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickBusy day today. I got out of the house, had breakfast at Liss's (La was getting a truck inspected in North Carolina), hopped on the red idiot and did some over-fences work after a hill-work warmup that went nicely indeed. The fences went *pretty* well -- Goof does not like new. She just doesn't. I redid the gymnastic and she was not impressed, took a couple of tries to go over it. I asked her to jump the triangles from the other direction (away from home) and she was like "What? Those? I can't do that! I've never seen these before in my life!!!" but she did eventually go over 'em.
I think perhaps Goof would do better with a warmup over some less-imposing stuff. She's still pretty green, all things considered. I mean, even when we do jumps, we go over 'em like five, six times and then quit. There is not a whole lot of drill going on... so some confidence-building lower stuff (eighteen inches is now "easy" for her and she is pretty willing to go right at 'em.) might help there. I'll have to set that up for next week.
On Friday, I made Trys come out with me so that she could see our Simple Lead Changes. As I've no doubt that this is a matter of extreme interest for the non-pony-oriented readers out there, I have located a supplemental youtube video to illustrate what the hell I am talking about. Here is someone who rides a lot better than I do on a much nicer horse than I have performing a simple change of lead in a figure-of-8 pattern. The horse starts off cantering on the RIGHT lead, then drops to a trot, then starts cantering on the LEFT lead. As they come around to the center, the horse again drops to the trot and picks up a RIGHT lead again. This thing here, this thing my horse and I can do. It's not as pretty as in the video, but it's correct on the lead fronts and does not contain more than about four strides of trot. Rome was not built in a day -- we will get prettier with practice.
The reason that we are doing simple changes is because they are on the way to doing flying changes. Horses automatically do flying changes the same day they hit the ground, but doing 'em on command and with a rider aboard is a whole different kettle of fish. We're not there yet. Maybe someday.
Following horse things, I got twelve bags of horse manure (I shovel it up off the floor of the barn and put it in feed sacks for easy transport.) and mulched the roses, peonies, asparagus, and large shrubberies in the yard.
While I was at it, I pruned the dead off the roses and snowball bush as well as removing an entire bush of yuck down by the creek. (Some sort of thorny nasty shrubbery, I don't know what.) I didn't lose that much ground on the roses, but seeing the bunny-gnawed bits three feet off the ground did piss me off yet again. (The bunnies climbed up the snow piles to get to the rose canes. Damn bunnies.)
As it was supposed to rain, I also raked up all sorts of leaves and bits from around the woodpile and the blueberry fencing. I was planning on setting all that stuff on fire, but it hadn't started to rain yet. Instead of going whole hog with the leaves and whatnot, I picked out the bark bits (do not blow or ash into the air) and set them alight.
I also moved the final bits of ugly wood into a pile alongside the existing woodpile. There is no longer a heap of fugly wood in my yard, killing the grass, annoying me every time I have to mow around it, and attracting snakes. The grass, however, was a casualty of my sloth. I don't imagine I will bother to re-seed as it will just get fucked up again next time we tip a dumptruck load of wood there... but it does look a lot nicer now.
Eventually, it started to rain decently so I did get to set the leaves and other fluffier stuff on fire. I'm still turning the fire over, but it's burned down to just coals at this point. It'll still be hot come the morning -- fires and ash piles hold heat an amazingly long time -- but it's not going to burn down the woods.
I also need to laundry but I haven't started that yet.
I think perhaps Goof would do better with a warmup over some less-imposing stuff. She's still pretty green, all things considered. I mean, even when we do jumps, we go over 'em like five, six times and then quit. There is not a whole lot of drill going on... so some confidence-building lower stuff (eighteen inches is now "easy" for her and she is pretty willing to go right at 'em.) might help there. I'll have to set that up for next week.
On Friday, I made Trys come out with me so that she could see our Simple Lead Changes. As I've no doubt that this is a matter of extreme interest for the non-pony-oriented readers out there, I have located a supplemental youtube video to illustrate what the hell I am talking about. Here is someone who rides a lot better than I do on a much nicer horse than I have performing a simple change of lead in a figure-of-8 pattern. The horse starts off cantering on the RIGHT lead, then drops to a trot, then starts cantering on the LEFT lead. As they come around to the center, the horse again drops to the trot and picks up a RIGHT lead again. This thing here, this thing my horse and I can do. It's not as pretty as in the video, but it's correct on the lead fronts and does not contain more than about four strides of trot. Rome was not built in a day -- we will get prettier with practice.
The reason that we are doing simple changes is because they are on the way to doing flying changes. Horses automatically do flying changes the same day they hit the ground, but doing 'em on command and with a rider aboard is a whole different kettle of fish. We're not there yet. Maybe someday.
Following horse things, I got twelve bags of horse manure (I shovel it up off the floor of the barn and put it in feed sacks for easy transport.) and mulched the roses, peonies, asparagus, and large shrubberies in the yard.
While I was at it, I pruned the dead off the roses and snowball bush as well as removing an entire bush of yuck down by the creek. (Some sort of thorny nasty shrubbery, I don't know what.) I didn't lose that much ground on the roses, but seeing the bunny-gnawed bits three feet off the ground did piss me off yet again. (The bunnies climbed up the snow piles to get to the rose canes. Damn bunnies.)
As it was supposed to rain, I also raked up all sorts of leaves and bits from around the woodpile and the blueberry fencing. I was planning on setting all that stuff on fire, but it hadn't started to rain yet. Instead of going whole hog with the leaves and whatnot, I picked out the bark bits (do not blow or ash into the air) and set them alight.
I also moved the final bits of ugly wood into a pile alongside the existing woodpile. There is no longer a heap of fugly wood in my yard, killing the grass, annoying me every time I have to mow around it, and attracting snakes. The grass, however, was a casualty of my sloth. I don't imagine I will bother to re-seed as it will just get fucked up again next time we tip a dumptruck load of wood there... but it does look a lot nicer now.
Eventually, it started to rain decently so I did get to set the leaves and other fluffier stuff on fire. I'm still turning the fire over, but it's burned down to just coals at this point. It'll still be hot come the morning -- fires and ash piles hold heat an amazingly long time -- but it's not going to burn down the woods.
I also need to laundry but I haven't started that yet.
