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dancinghorse) wrote2005-01-24 09:43 am
Taking a quiet day
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 ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
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.
And I will be very glad to go back into the bunker after that and Write Some Books.
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"Keed did not throw a shoe..."
Re: "Keed did not throw a shoe..."
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It still amazes me that Lipps are not inherently huge horses. They're so solid-looking I expect them to be Clydesdaleish in size, and every time I read your neeps mentioning their general smallness, I boggle all over again. Someday I'm going to have to get down there and meet all these little-big horses myself. :)
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The thing to remember is that they're short, but you have to go six inches taller to get the same mass in another riding breed. When I was shopping for horses with my neighbor, I was feeling underhorsed on 16+-hand horses, compared to Capria who is somewhat shy of 15 hands.
Pandora at 15.3 has the bulk, feet, head, and overall affect of a Warmblood a hand or more taller. She's a big, impressive mare.
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this is exactly the approach my trainer took. It works SO. WELL. and I try to always remember it, though of course, all the hard coding I received in years of "classical" training still rears its ugly head, and I have to smack myself back into being a Reasonable. Horseperson. who understands the horsesaurus. Sadly, the trainer and I do not Click, though *his* teacher and I do, so I am not doing regular lessons with him (or the teacher, who lives many hours away). I really need to find a local person to work regularly with.
I was talking to a horse friend about Joey (that is JJ's aunt) and all of her Issues. And I am still waffling on whether to keep or sell her, and find a more suitable horse. I know we could get together, and I love her, and she has a lovely mind, and is beautiful, and savvy, and stuff. But she has Issues. And I am dealing Ok, but not terribly well. and i need Guidance. but i am TERRIBLY picky -- I need to work well with the Instructor (a challenge with my analytical brain and sometimes hyper/scattered personality) and I need to like their training/riding philosophy. Which as you know is not the easiest thing in the world to find.
I DID start aikido on Friday, and I think it will help, with my body use (when the muscle aches stop, anyway), and philosophically with getting centered in an environment other than the horses. But it is still not regular riding lessons....
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Joni is a godsend. I could not handle either of my young ones without her. Keed would still be my trail bud, but I would not have a clue about Pook or Camilla.
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Capria liked Ember, remember? Tori did a poem about Twix and presented it at the Palos Verdes Cowboy Poetry Festival, accompanied by timed slides of the girlie, 77 all together. Lots of sniffles and gasps of amazement, SRO. Soon in residence we'll have a friend's Anglo-Arab stallion, we'll know when to ready the turkey baster for Tori's Pooklet!
A lot of changes in Cavalia since I saw them the first time. The Equus issue is out with my photos, too bad they didn't use the cover shot, but at least the color is ok in the rest. Happy birthday and Enjoy!
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We have a tease mare for da Pook again. He sure does like Pandora.
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I've been reading the dancinghorse LJ for some months now... long time since dancinghorse posted on sff.net and longer still since GEnie. The comparison of Arizona with white horses, to Massachusetts with 2+ feet of whiteout, is quite a contrast. Plowhorses would be really useful this month here!
[The picture is from a month ago. There wasn't any snow -then-. 26" came down on the weekend, ontop of a few inches of white stuff that came down a few days before then. And now there's more on the way today.]
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-=Jeff=-
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