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joflasherGreat weekend. Lots and lots of swimming. Once a day in fact. pancua, you left your suit in our downstairs bathroom. Want to come swimming again tonight so you can get it? :P
Besides swimming, I also got to spend Sunday hanging out with the above mentionedpancua. She's making a bodice and needed someone to measure darts and such...all those pesky things that you just can NOT do to a piece of clothing if you are currently wearing it. You guys should all be proud of her ... she finally cut that cream brocade she's been hording for years.
I have two paintings close to being finished. One is a nifty little cartoony sort of thing thats very different from most of my stuff. The other is a hydraulic frog. I need at least two more before September. Worldcon and Dragoncon are both the same week and I just don't have enough small originals left to fill my panels. I could put in a bunch of prints but both of those cons are big enough sellers that I'd rather have the originals up. My own dumb fault for not checking dates better.
Saturday (pre-swimming) was spent up at the farm. Carol has decided that Junior is steady enough as a trail horse and wants me to start in on Apache again. Apache is a big draft/Appy cross who got the worst of both worlds. Draft size and laziness, Appy intelligence and stubborness all on top of the normal teenage horse "you can't make me" attitude that he just doesn't want to grow out of. He's also fricking HUGE and it takes all my strength to move him if he doesn't want to go. His neck is bigger than my body and considerably stronger than my arms and he knows it.
He's known for bolting, bucking and rearing whenever he decides its time to go home during a trail ride. Carol pretty much confined him as a ring only riding horse for the last few months hoping some constant work would get it out of his system. No such luck. Saturday we got all three tricks in quick succession. We crested the top of a hill, he tried to bolt down it, I stopped him and instead we bucked the whole way down. Got to the bottom, I pulled him into a circle and the rearing started. He got two in before I got fed up and cracked him one between the ears. I hope he has a knot on his head; I was swinging with everything I had. Of course, I had to lean forward in the saddle and STREEETCH in order to reach so everything I had wasn't all that much.
*sigh*
I HATE to do it but I'm pretty sure I need to move him into a harsher bit. He's just too strong and he has NO respect at all for the D ring snaffle he's in how. He just plows right through it. One of the other girls at the farm offered me her rubber pelham and I might take her up on it. That bit has two sets of reins, one of which is used to put pressure on a chain that runs under the chin. If everything is going well, you don't need to use the second set. If its going poorly, well, you have some pretty serious leverage to back up your request to stop. We'll see how it goes.
While all the rodeoing was going on, the Boy was cruising around on Tisa. They must have lapped us 4 times in the meadow, just galloping along like there wasn't a care in the world. I'm glad that he has the courage to do that and enjoy it. Since we fell last winter, I stiffen up in the gallop whenever we get to a turn. I'm not comfortable with it anymore and I rarely will do it. Tisa LOVES to go yahooing around at full speed, so her and the Boy suit each other well out there.
We also got Tequila all locked into the trailer. Poor guy was so scared. There was actually a steady stream of sweat falling off of him from the moment the butt bar went up. He backed into it once, realized he couldn't get out and went into cold sweats. Everytime we'd go to the next step in closing up the trailer, he'd hunker down a foot and start shaking.
The original plan involved loading him, locking him in and then taking him for a ride around the block. After seeing his reaction to just being shut in, we decided it'd probably break his fragile little mind to actaully go somewhere ... not to mention the fact that every time I tried to leave the trailer, he'd start spasming and screaming. Claustiphobic horse, who knew?
We ended up shutting him and I in there for about an hour with some grain. We didn't come back out until he was settled down enough to actually eat the grain instead of just picking it up and spitting it back out. Opening up the trailer went a good deal better. He still flinched and hunkered down like he was waiting to be beaten but he didn't start shaking or anything. It actually took awhile to convince him to step back off of the trailer. He's fairly well trained as a halter horse at this point ... I step away from him, he steps towards me, I step towards him, he backs up, all without touching him or his lead in anyway. When I asked him to back off of the trailer, I actually had to get in front of him, put my shoulder into his chest and push. He backed his front feet up but refused to move the back ones ... he had all four in one spot, balancing for all he was worth so that he didn't have to move those back feet. I guess his one run-in with the butt bar left an impression. Luckily, that position was very unsteady and a good shove from me made him put a hind leg out and realize the bar was gone.
After all that, he got a nice warm bath and rub down and some hand grazing. We'll see if he considers it to be a tramatic experience when we do it again tomorrow. I've only got 2 weeks to get him trailering comfortably before we haul him off to NH Arab for his big debut. I've already spent 3 times that just getting him to comfortably walk onto the trailer and stand in it. Prognosis, stable but not good.
pancua, you left your suit in our downstairs bathroom. Want to come swimming again tonight so you can get it? :PBesides swimming, I also got to spend Sunday hanging out with the above mentioned
pancua. She's making a bodice and needed someone to measure darts and such...all those pesky things that you just can NOT do to a piece of clothing if you are currently wearing it. You guys should all be proud of her ... she finally cut that cream brocade she's been hording for years.I have two paintings close to being finished. One is a nifty little cartoony sort of thing thats very different from most of my stuff. The other is a hydraulic frog. I need at least two more before September. Worldcon and Dragoncon are both the same week and I just don't have enough small originals left to fill my panels. I could put in a bunch of prints but both of those cons are big enough sellers that I'd rather have the originals up. My own dumb fault for not checking dates better.
Saturday (pre-swimming) was spent up at the farm. Carol has decided that Junior is steady enough as a trail horse and wants me to start in on Apache again. Apache is a big draft/Appy cross who got the worst of both worlds. Draft size and laziness, Appy intelligence and stubborness all on top of the normal teenage horse "you can't make me" attitude that he just doesn't want to grow out of. He's also fricking HUGE and it takes all my strength to move him if he doesn't want to go. His neck is bigger than my body and considerably stronger than my arms and he knows it.
He's known for bolting, bucking and rearing whenever he decides its time to go home during a trail ride. Carol pretty much confined him as a ring only riding horse for the last few months hoping some constant work would get it out of his system. No such luck. Saturday we got all three tricks in quick succession. We crested the top of a hill, he tried to bolt down it, I stopped him and instead we bucked the whole way down. Got to the bottom, I pulled him into a circle and the rearing started. He got two in before I got fed up and cracked him one between the ears. I hope he has a knot on his head; I was swinging with everything I had. Of course, I had to lean forward in the saddle and STREEETCH in order to reach so everything I had wasn't all that much.
*sigh*
I HATE to do it but I'm pretty sure I need to move him into a harsher bit. He's just too strong and he has NO respect at all for the D ring snaffle he's in how. He just plows right through it. One of the other girls at the farm offered me her rubber pelham and I might take her up on it. That bit has two sets of reins, one of which is used to put pressure on a chain that runs under the chin. If everything is going well, you don't need to use the second set. If its going poorly, well, you have some pretty serious leverage to back up your request to stop. We'll see how it goes.
While all the rodeoing was going on, the Boy was cruising around on Tisa. They must have lapped us 4 times in the meadow, just galloping along like there wasn't a care in the world. I'm glad that he has the courage to do that and enjoy it. Since we fell last winter, I stiffen up in the gallop whenever we get to a turn. I'm not comfortable with it anymore and I rarely will do it. Tisa LOVES to go yahooing around at full speed, so her and the Boy suit each other well out there.
We also got Tequila all locked into the trailer. Poor guy was so scared. There was actually a steady stream of sweat falling off of him from the moment the butt bar went up. He backed into it once, realized he couldn't get out and went into cold sweats. Everytime we'd go to the next step in closing up the trailer, he'd hunker down a foot and start shaking.
The original plan involved loading him, locking him in and then taking him for a ride around the block. After seeing his reaction to just being shut in, we decided it'd probably break his fragile little mind to actaully go somewhere ... not to mention the fact that every time I tried to leave the trailer, he'd start spasming and screaming. Claustiphobic horse, who knew?
We ended up shutting him and I in there for about an hour with some grain. We didn't come back out until he was settled down enough to actually eat the grain instead of just picking it up and spitting it back out. Opening up the trailer went a good deal better. He still flinched and hunkered down like he was waiting to be beaten but he didn't start shaking or anything. It actually took awhile to convince him to step back off of the trailer. He's fairly well trained as a halter horse at this point ... I step away from him, he steps towards me, I step towards him, he backs up, all without touching him or his lead in anyway. When I asked him to back off of the trailer, I actually had to get in front of him, put my shoulder into his chest and push. He backed his front feet up but refused to move the back ones ... he had all four in one spot, balancing for all he was worth so that he didn't have to move those back feet. I guess his one run-in with the butt bar left an impression. Luckily, that position was very unsteady and a good shove from me made him put a hind leg out and realize the bar was gone.
After all that, he got a nice warm bath and rub down and some hand grazing. We'll see if he considers it to be a tramatic experience when we do it again tomorrow. I've only got 2 weeks to get him trailering comfortably before we haul him off to NH Arab for his big debut. I've already spent 3 times that just getting him to comfortably walk onto the trailer and stand in it. Prognosis, stable but not good.
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no subject
Date: 2004-08-02 07:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-02 08:04 am (UTC)And unfortuently I cant come swimming tonight, I have a dinner get together with a friend, perhaps tuesday night?
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Date: 2004-08-02 08:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-02 08:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-02 08:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-02 08:16 am (UTC)I found it in my pocket when I got home. hee! =)
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Date: 2004-08-02 08:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-02 08:22 am (UTC)