Poorly Personage

Due to some apparently dodgy food on Thursday evening I was rather incapacitated for the weekend and actually out of work on Friday.
Food poisoning is no bueno  :-(

New girl F bravely sharing with Nancy
while K photo bombs front haynet

Poor ponies were stuck inside from Wednesday evening to Sunday afternoon when I finally got back to the yard to put them out for a couple of hours yesterday. Turning them out and doing a quick clean of the stables wiped me out and meant I spent the rest of the afternoon on the couch vegging in front of the TV.

Kika playing nice with new girl...may have something to do
 with it being easier to have another head to counterbalance
swing of the haynet for hay access ;-)
Not stupid my ponios

It was super wet & windy those days anyway, so I think they'll forgive me for leaving them wrapped up warm & dry inside - happy coincidence really.
I didn't get out to them on my lunch break today either sadly as i was filling in for another person at the office, so by the time i got on top of their work and mine it was a belated home - time for me. 7pm vs 5.30pm - Admittedly i don't often get to leg it on the dot of 5.30 anymore either. Sorry ponies i won't be making it to see you this evening as me too sleepy as it'll be after 8pm when I get home. However all going well i should be able to turn them out at midday tomorrow.

Transition Time

Nancy's turn for some arena work this evening and before I even got to the yard tonight I'd decided that I wasn't going to let our lack of flexibility & bend get me down this evening. Tonight was going to be all about transitions up & down when I asked regardless whether or not we were arrow straight or if someone's nose was straight in front of her rather than nicely vertical to the ground.
I wanted to KISS - Keep It Simple Stoopid ... yeah I get it spelled differently cos I'm speshul

Yikes I look preggers in this pic O.o

We still had our sticky moments on circles although because i wasn't beating myself up about things not being perfect i probably wasn't tensing and bracing against her so all things considered they were much better than when I nit pick and generally harass her - who'd have thunk it?! *eyeroll*
We got some lovely canter work, even if i do say so myself. I tried to concentrate more on walk/trot trot/walk transitions as our downward transitions can be sticky and are typically where N gets quite strung out & heavy in my hands as we are not in tune enough nor sensitive enough yet to halt off my seat and she quite rightly takes offence to my hauling off her face to slow down and/or stop. I don't do that every time, not by a long shot, but she is a lot of horse and sometimes she needs a not so gentle reminder that when I ask for her to slow down and/products stop i mean now and not in 5 strides time.
She responds better to vocal cues than I give her credit for, I really need to get better at using vocal aids and not deaden my poor horses due to my abysmal riding ability.

The face of a Martyr = Saint Nancy

Things I need to remember next time I'm in her tack:
- support her better with my legs on turns/circles/changes of rein;
- keep my hands steadier on the reins, keep them level. Watch my inside hand, keep it up and in line with the outside one;
- maintain contact, don't favour my inside rein over the outside one!
- use my inside leg to bend her from the ribs into my outside hand ... this will be a long work in progress as for some reason I still have it completely arseways in my head.

Oddly i feel I can work better on these things with N than K, as Kika is almost too sensitive. Any slight hand movement or shift in weight on my part that is unanticipated by her and she hollows, scoots or her head pops up etc - she often tries to pre-emptively guess what is coming which can also lead to strops when I don't do as she anticipated from me, makes me giggle more often than not.
Although Nancy is longer striding and covers the ground better than K whose defense is to hollow and get choppy, I feel I have the luxury of time while riding Nancy to make slight corrections and adjustments which I don't always feel I have on K. That seems weird written down and is not something I have actively thought about before. I shall have to pay more attention when I ride again on Thursday and through the weekend to see what i can do to change & improve on this possibly mental block of mine.

Kindly Kika

I was beginning to think that I had jinxed myself with the Monster Mare No More post; but Kika stepped up to the plate and was back to being her new norm for this evenings spin.

For those who don't follow me on insta,
we have our second snow

We still had some sidestepping and tension with the odd eyes-on-stalks moments, but there was a lot more relaxed work in between. I even managed to slow our walk with my seat at one stage, by concentrating on my breathing and slowing my rocking in the saddle to slow her stride - talk about a light bulb moment as pulling off her face to try to slow her down when she winds herself up is just playing with fire seeing as she could very easily (and understandably) take offence and tell me to F off in her own lovable (sarcasm) way.

Sorry for darkness of captures but SNOW PONIOS
(i didn't want to use flash and create alien eyes)
 #sorrynotsorry

We just covered the basics, but as we did them well i called it quits after 20ish minutes. Walk/halt transitions with changes of rein thrown in and lots of vocal praise the few times she halted without stretching her neck and pulling the reins through my fingers. We also had no qualms today with approaching the side to rid ourselves of my coat & her quarter sheet. Nice soft trot work with 10m circles tossed in for funsies if she tried to s - shape squirm from the sides to reinstall our bend. She did those very well when also mixed into our serpentines, they actually had a relaxing effect on the pair of us. Somehow I manage to better maintain my outside rein contact when circling vs going in a straight line...am I complicated or what?!

Pre warm up mirror selfie as Kika giraffed at something

First bit of canter work on our bad side was divine, or at least it felt that way - what it looked like besides the glimpses i got briefly in the mirror is anyone's guess as i don't think anyone was around to see - thankfully in a way as i ride like a plank if i think someone is watching. A change of rein later and someone lost her marbles for our supposed good side canter. Not misbehaving scaring the bejaysus out of me marble loss - just hollowed choppy disconcentrated (yes I make up words) canter. So after 3 20m she wasn't relaxing for me so we worked on some trot/canter transitions till I got the soft response i wanted a couple of times before we went back to soft trot work serpentines.

Post-work satisfied companionship selfies,
I was glad of quarter sheet this evening to wrap around me too

I hesitate to hope this will return to the norm, as perhaps she was just in a more zen state after spending some time this afternoon running around the turnout like a looper with Nancy due to the introduction of the Guru's new mare. The new horse apparently stood out of the way bemused as my two haired around like muppets taking full advantage of the excuse to go a bit apeshit. Sadly no pictures as i wasn't there and L had to keep her hands free incase things got hairy and she had to rescue her new girl from my monsters.

Snowy-monsters...it might be time i add on the neck covers ;-)

It may surprise people to hear that apparently Nancy was the nastier of my two in "welcoming" the new girl in that wonderful way horses do by causing a fuss to establish the pecking order. Methinks Nancy was tired of being the bottom rung on the ladder and she has decided that this new youngster shall not be sneaking ahead of her now that she has gotten used to being Kika's #2 in their massive herd of 2 *eye-roll*
Horses eh?!

Semi-Silent Sunday

Top before heading into the woods
Bottom on our way back to the barn

The weather was beautiful this morning so I shelved the idea of arena work and went for another hack in the woods instead. So of course I snapped a lot of photos en route despite Kika trying to pull my arm out a couple of time & Nancy re-rolling us along a trail i had been meaning to try for a while, so I figured why not but almost regretted it as a house bellow us seemed to be doing some electric sawing of something and scared the usually rock steady Nancy as she couldn't see where the noise was coming from but kept her fear in check my jigging slightly but not going into full meltdown.

Special shadows

Now for a relatively silent photo dump.

No better view than between these ears

Best way to stay warm, wrapping the
 quarter sheet around my thighs

Homeward bound - i love the light

Hope the photo heavy post isn't too boring, the day was too nice to spend cooped up in an arena. The barefoot trimmer was out again yesterday evening and she mentioned that both girls could be a little foot sore so i opted to take it easy with a stroll in the woods.

Wonderful Woods

I feel like I am on a one way ticket on the struggle bus with arena work this week.

Kika was like a slippery eel this morning, jumping out of her skin and looking for reasons to jink and misbehave. I couldn't get her to sidle alongside the arena entrance to hang the quarter sheet & my jacket to start our work. I had to dismount & do it from the ground so as not to descend into a fully fledged argument. Mission accomplished, we didn't argue and in fact went on to some much nicer work than Wednesday's scared shambles.

I kept it simple walk/trot/canter, circles, serpentines, figures of eight & transitions. Unlike Wednesday there was a lot less head popping up and loss of steering on my part. It is a horrible feeling when she tries to stick her ears up my nose as she hollows and throws her front feet around getting light on her toes & making my reins useless, I have to be very careful as that can quickly escalate into a rear if not handled with care...knock on wood i hopefully have a better handle on her and can now manage to get around her mental problems by asking different ways to end up with the outcome i want at the end of the day.

Just what the doc ordered - happy ears & happy rider

Nancy & I went into the woods for a stroll today (with Kika on a leash after arena work). I didn't want another argument in the arena with N, she isn't as troublesome as Kika as in i don't worry about N misbehaving to the same extent as K. However I feel like I am doing wrong by Nancy and get quite disheartened when things start out nice but then get progressively worse the more I try to make it better. Sometimes I think I'd be better to just not try, I seem to only make things worse when I try!

The more I try to flex her and get her to bend & soften around my inside leg the more she resists  and locks her jaw against me. I am sure there is a simple solution & that it is all my fault,  I am probably holding tension in my body and/or sitting crooked. I am hopeful of signing up for some more lessons over the Christmas holidays as it is proving too difficult to schedule lessons when I am working as the teacher i ride with doesn't teach Saturdays or after 6 on a week day.

Nancy did make me laugh last night though as she again let her rebellious side out with some canter transitions crow hops. There was actually plenty nice work from us in the arena last night, it was far from full on depression but i did get a little down on myself. Fingers crossed i can get my act together and ride them both more often. I think more saddle time (and lessons when possible) will help me through these hiccups.

We are all still friends though ☺

Happy St Nicholas day blogosphere - our yard owners attach a lovely goody bag to the outside of the horses' stables for us. It is so lovely of them & I am looking forward to scoffing the chocolates,  sweets & biscuits for days to come as i got two this year! Weeeeeeee ♡

Scared Sausage

Despite running considerably later than I'd have liked due to meeting a friend quickly after work last night; i still managed to climb on Kika for a spin.
It wasn't bad, but it was far from great. She got a bee in her bonnet about one of the arena long sides, I have no idea what she could hear or see that I was missing, so we had a few discussions as to her not being a crossbreed llama/giraffe and finished on a decent note.

"There are monsters everywhere" - Kika

Again I couldn't really be mad at her as she has had so little saddle time - to say we are both rusty is an understatement. Perhaps my forgetting to use the quarter sheet didn't help, but it wasn't so cold that she could get away with sidestepping away from the sides when it suited her to be all eyes-on-stalks.
We stuck to walk/trot/halt transitions with lots of bending thrown in. I may have been hoping to make us both dizzy so we would forget the monsters hiding around the arena.

"I swear here are terrifying things lurking"

We got some nice work between shenanigans, and there was no nastyness in she was just wholly distracted. We all have these days so I'll file it away & hope for better next time. ☺

This face could never be used for evil

She was so distracted when I was un-tacking her she had her nose to the floor sniffling around like a dog after a scent. Something else then caught her attention & she stood stock still not making a single face nor fuss about my putting her rug back on. Which is almost unheard of normally she has plenty to say while i rug her back up. She can be a right expressive grouch.

Silly Season

There is a nip in the air the whole time now and we have had our first snow, so I can no longer delude myself into hoping for a mild winter like last year. #sadtimes

The girls have been in good form despite more downtime from work due to my job spilling into overtime which means no saddle time. We'll i can't completely blame my job, I was volunteering on a stand to sell Irish things (like wool knits, foodstuffs,  irish coffees, smoked salmon & brown soda bread etc). Every year an International Bazaar is held over two days in an expo center where hundreds of stands set up to sell produce from their countries or second hand books etc to raise money for charity. Last year the whole thing raised over €500,000 shared amongst a number of worthy causes. Every year I volunteer on the Irish stand for a 3-3 1/2hour window, I am usually there longer though by the time i get sustenance in the form of super tasty food either side of my shift. This year I scoffed austrich burger & boer sausage with peach chutney from the South African stand and delicious Souvlaki from the Greek stand over both days as well as picking up two packs of candy canes from the American stand to hang on the Christmas tree when it goes up and then periodically scoff as the feeling takes me.
Anyways i was there from 12.30 to sometime after 4 on Saturday, then 10 till after 7pm on Sunday as i helped dismantle the stand when all was done.

"Old" photos not yet shared

I managed to turn the girls out Saturday morning before 10 and brought them in sometime after 8pm. Sunday & Monday they weren't so lucky sadly and spent 2 days and nights in their stable as i couldn't get there on my lunch break Monday due to covering someone else's work on top of my own. I think that is he most time they have spent in the stable without turnout - definitely since Nancy got here and for Kika probably since she started going out in winter so like 2012?!

Thanks to Roosa & Vallu for selling me this fab set

All that guff above and i am only now getting to Nancy's sillies last night. When bringing them in from the field last night she slammed on the brakes and refused point blank to be the brave one to walk past the scary works, traffic cones, orange mesh etc. I was very pleasantly surprised when Kika showed more faith in me and allowed herself to be coaxed past in front.  Nancy happily followed on without issue , well I don't count staccato steps, bugs eyes and snorting from the pair of them as issues as they were moving in the direction I wanted lol.

Patented Butter-wouldn't-melt look (also old shot not yet shared)

I managed to ride Nancy for the first time in exactly a week (my life is such a shambles - where does the time get to?!) - she made me laugh so hard as her stubborn draft streak came out. A couple of our halt transitions were met with an immovable force on her side. When my pony club kicks were met with indifference and lack of mobility i pocked up a crop - she def changed her tune then and went almost to her other extreme where a request for a canter transition was met with a crow hop depart. I laughed so hard and decided I have to be more consistent with her. It really isn't fair :-/