dancinghorse | Taking a quiet day (Reply)

And I need one. You know it's bad when you can't remember more than two days back, because so much went on and your brain is giving you a "Disk Full" message.

Saturday my roomie from WFC, Alison, came over to meet the ponies. Her schedule is much worse than mine, so it took this long to find a day when we both could do it. She had a very good time, and enjoyed brushing and grooming various Large Muddy Objects--we had had rain the day before, and they had taken full advantage of it. She's not a horse person but is a dog and cat person, so the skills transferred over.

After a suitable amount of horse time, we went to lunch and had some good writer-type discussion. And that was a good day, though by the time I had run a slew of errands and run home and fed horses, I was a whipped puppy.

Sunday was lesson day. The wind was blowing hard, which made the horses hyper. While keed had his Teacher Torture, I did the now-routine work with Camilla. She was expecting it, wanted to come out and be groomed and saddled, but then she had a panic attack. Between wind, visitor watching lessons, and me being a toxic mix of tired and distracted, she was not having a good morning. We were noodling, me trying to figure out how to get her calmed down and her not really calming down at all, when Joni came to the rescue. (Or, Why we pay Joni the big bucks.) She pointed out that I was doing all the wrong things from the horse's point of view--she'd push, I'd back off (and believe me she can push--the mental energy she puts out can knock you off your feet); she'd get freaky, I'd get freaky right along with her. So we went back to the groundwork I did with Pook two years ago--because she's in the same place mentally, though she manifests it very differently. We focused on step one: she moves away from me when I ask, and she stays out of my space unless invited in. And I refuse to let her push me backward. She needs me to take the lead, her panic is coming from being freaked out and feeling that she's stuck being in charge.

It sure does work. She's much softer already, and much happier. So we'll do this all week, and see how she is on Friday when Joni comes back. I'll ride her again when she feels secure that I'm in charge.

It was interesting while we were talking about this. Camilla was loose and could go wherever she wanted. She'd wander off, scowl, then wander back to see what we were doing. She had a lot to think about. At the end, her expression was very strange--almost as if she'd been drugged. She was in deep data-processing mode.

After Camilla had her innings, Pook and I had a ridden lesson. The wind by then was very strong. He was just fine, though he was shying off the bushes on the north side, which are very scary when the wind blows, all the horses say. Of course Pooka's idea of a spook is to simply not want to go there, so it's not a huge deal. And Joni presented her take on young horses who aren't fully into the aids yet, and why it's a bad idea to force them toward the horseasaurus--which is the standard approach pretty much everywhere. In her view, if the horse is spooking and you get forceful, you turn the spooky thing into a huge big deal. If you work around it instead, ride figures that gradually incorporate the spooky area, the horse forgets he's scared. A longtime habit of spooking at one spot may never be totally eradicated, but over time he just gets a little tense when he goes by it, instead of blowing his lid every single time.

This btw is why she's flown to Hawaii a couple of times a year to train a Lipizzan. He was scared out of his tiny little mind by a dog chasing a chicken out of the bushes alongside his arena. Being too smart for his own good, he then decided that part of the arena was an active Hellmouth and he was never, ever, ever not in this life no way Jose ever going near it again. Which was a bit of a problem for his owner, and her trainer took the conventional approach: make him go there. Which escalated things literally right out of the arena. And made him essentially unridable because he wouldn't go in the arena and he was too scaredy to do trails.

Took Joni a week, but she got him to realize there was no Hellmouth. He's still a bit spooky over there, but nothing unmanageable.

Anyway. Pook has never had an experience like that (and we're determined he never will), but we used the principle to good effect. Rode lots of figures, worked on my ongoing tendency to drop the outside rein and pull the inside, and kept it to a walk because if we'd trotted, we'd probably have been blown across the valley.

After lessons were over, horses got sorted out and we settled in to wait for Pandora. She finally arrived around 2 o'clock, in a huge rig hauled by a leetle truck. Sue said she knew why his transmission blew, once she saw the truck--"All tail and no dog" was how she put it. However it did arrive, the driver was extremely nice, and Pandora is gorgeous. Also, for a Lipizzan, huge. She's got to be 15.3, with feet like platters, and a great big gentle head that to be honest makes me think of a bull terrier--she has the same kind of archy skull and the same sort of eye. Very baroque, and in its way very beautiful. She's sweet and calm, though she doesn't take guff from anyone. When she arrived she was not in her body--she was weird and withdrawn--but after a little while her various pieces came together and she settled in. Sue is thrilled with her. There will be a learning curve--even Arabians (whom she's been breeding for many years) don't prepare you for the Lipp intelligence--but this is a wonderful first Lipizzan.

Pook of course took her arrival in stride. She's in love with him--she got all worried and whickery when I moved him at dinnertime--but the rest of the crew reacted about as expected. Keed did not throw a shoe, I headed that one off at the pass, but Ephiny destroyed the hay cart during a wild escape, and Camilla damn near brought down a stall wall. However they quieted down fairly quickly, and at bedtime I found Capria and Pandora side by side in their pens--which is significant as in order to do that, Capria had to move away from her own herd; not to mention Capria doesn't like anybody in the world except keed, and sometimes she wish he'd disappear, too. In the morning, Pan and Capria and Carrma and Gaudia were in a bunch around Pan's stall. Camilla was still defending Ephiny against the Evil Interloper, and keed has a look about him that makes me glad Curt the Wonder Shoer is due pretty much any time now. Keed wants to Rule The World, and that means all Invaders are to be Eliminated.

It would just figure that the one who handles alien invasions best is the stallion. Pook is a gracious host, and all the ladies fall in love with him.

And today is a quiet day--horse sortage, must order hay, and some work. Pan will go out in the arena by herself at lunch, so she can have some extra space. If all goes well, she can go out with someone else in a few days, probably Carrma, but we'll see. If she were mine and not just boarding here until her own barn is built, she'd get incorporated into the herd, but as it is, it's safer to keep her separate.

Finished noodling with the draft of Song of Unmaking, and now it's time for first draft again. I doubt this week will see much--new dog is arriving in Phoenix tomorrow night and we have to go and get her, and then Thursday smoemeth and wojsvenwoj are flying in for the weekend. And Friday is lesson day and Saturday has Things Planned and Sunday we are going, at last, to see Cavalia.