Separation Anxiety

Sorry for the lack of posts this week, I've been drowning in homework and general college-life busyness :( Monday I had a Genetics test and Wednesday was Organic chemistry...... SUCKS. I finally got both of those behind me right in time for Limerick to get adjusted on Wednesday (boo). So, poor pony isn't rideable until tomorrow, just in time for me to go home, which means no riding until Sunday at the earliest. However, I decided to update because I have some exciting news. This pretty is currently on its way to me!!!!!!!!!!!!

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I finally found a used County that I reallllllyyyyyyyy hope will work for us! It should get here no later than Monday, and I'll have it on trial for a week, during which time my County rep will come out to evaluate and hopefully reflock :) Since I'm going home this weekend, I'm going to ride Huer in Hillary's new dressage saddle, which coincidentally is very similar to mine. YAY for seeing Hillary, Hue, my family, dogs, and Rue <3

Rock Star Status

The title of this post obviously refers to Limerick, who was beyond fantabulous today! I'm not gonna lie, the last time we went XC schooling, he flipped his shit when other horses got to jump before him, proceeded to refuse a starter coop with my trainer onboard, and kind of made me question whether or not I'd ever be able to handle him (this was in August, maybe 3 weeks after I got him). As you can imagine, I was nervous and went in expecting the worst, which is why I was so pleasantly surprised when everything WAY surpassed my expectations :)

We started out watching Collyn and Frankie go around the training/prelim course for at least an hour, calmly standing and filming them the whole time and taking a minute to splash in the water. Let me just say that C+F are total badasses and I want to be them someday! Limerick started out ok, though a little bit nervous and insecure when Frankie wasn't in sight, but he calmed down as soon as we turned to watch them go or walked around a little bit to get out his jitters.

Then, Limerick and Frankie trotted/raced back to the starter course, and it was our turn to have fun :) S started the lesson by having us hack around the field, doing some trot and canter work. We had to canter downhill, which made me more nervous than anything else we did, but is SO much easier when I just lean back! We moved on to jumping one starter fence at a time, slowly moving around the field and occasionally jumping the middle fence. We jumped a little log, to a brown coop, to a white coop, to a black coop, to a stone wall, to a little wood jump with three poles, to barrels, to tires! I think I got all of those in the right order...

None of them presented any real problems, though some of them elicited bigger jumps from Limerick than others. There were also a few that he tried to get his head down afterwards, and I don't really know what that was about, but I'll chalk it up to a little bit of back soreness. He's getting adjusted on either Monday or Wednesday of this week, so YAY for that! I also got to use my new cooler today, and I highly recommend it! It's a weatherbeeta and actually does what it's supposed to do, as in doesn't make Limmers sweat more!

The day could not have gone better and was such a good first experience for Limerick and me :) He got a whole bucket of Nicker Doodles and lots of love, as well as some liniment on his legs and turn out when we got home. I can't wait to go schooling again and can't thank S, E, G, and Collyn enough!

Here's the video: (sorry it's mostly unedited, I suck at iMovie..)

Some pictures:

The cooler! Kind of weird, but super effective and the first one I've ever used that doesn't cause him to get hotter

Gorgeous ending to a gorgeous and perfect day :) 

Dressage Lesson and Jump School!

Yesterday, I had a good lesson with G to work on our dressage. My main goal was to figure out why exactly Limerick has started running around like a freight train with his jaw locked, and we were somewhat successful. I discovered that the second I pick up even a light contact, he throws his head straight up in the air... okeedoke. So I started working with what he was giving me instead of against it, and basically rode around for the rest of the time on the buckle! From then on, the lesson was really good and I rode in Collyn's dressage saddle, which means my abs burn today. Such a satisfying feeling :)

Today, Collyn and I hacked around in the field with Kimmie on foot (Jazz is still lame), which was a nice and relaxing end to a stressful school week. We went through multiple gorgeous fields behind CVF, trotted and cantered some, and took bunches of pictures! Then, Collyn gave me a mini mini jump lesson in the ring, which I have videos of! I worked a lot on trying to keep my body more upright before, over, and after fences, which is hard and something that I have to think about a lot to make it happen. You'll see in one of the videos that I'm so upright in midair that I get pulled down on landing... Kinda awkward to ride and I definitely learned my lesson afterwards! Lims and I felt very in-sync, he was forward and awesome, and we only had to do the course once because it went so well the first time :)

Things to look forward to:

1. XC schooling tomorrow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! With S and Collyn
2. Lesson with S on Sunday

The Dressage test I want to start learning

Weird silhouette of Collyn and Frank

Crabby

I'm not entirely sure what's gotten up Limerick's butt lately, but recently our rides have either been really good, where he's been super willing and soft, or pretty bad, where he locks his jaw, runs around like a giraffe, and runs through the bit like a freight train. On super awesome days, I *almost* forget his behavior on the bad days, but not quite. Our rides from Sunday and Monday are the perfect examples of Limerick's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde behavior.

Sunday, though not perfect, Limerick was damn close. We started out in the large front field at CVF, doing hill work and trotting over uneven terrain. We were probably out there for 15-20 minutes, all of it spent either walking or trotting (and some of it spent taking pictures...). Now, Limface has a tendency to get silly out in the field and can be insecure when he can't see his friends, but Sunday he whinnied twice, and that was that. He got over it, no more dramatics or protestations. He never tried to run back to the barn, didn't attempt to constantly angle his body in that direction, and two whinnies is probably an all-time low for us, so I considered that part of the ride a success. Then, because I wanted to do some canter work, we went into the outdoor. He was good, but has unfortunately started pulling down on the bit again, even in the three-ring :( I have decided that bits obviously aren't going to solve this problem and I refuse to use anything harsher, so we're going to start having flat lessons centered around this problem. I've fought a lot of pulling battles lately, but he gave me the day off, which is good because my hands are starting to actually ache afterwards. The ride was relaxing and just what I needed before an insane school week, plus it was gorgeous outside! Here are some pictures, the first three are from Hillary's visit that I just found, and the last ones are from our ride in the field on Sunday:

Enter Mr. Hyde. Monday, we actually had a pretty decent ride in the ring, though it still involved a small battle of wills about who would hold up Limerick's head... I think I won that one, until we headed out to the front field for a relaxing cool down. As you can see from the pictures, you walk up the gravel driveway going towards the field. We were at the top of the driveway when Limerick spotted a small piece of a white plastic bag clinging to the grass. No big deal, he gave it the hairy eyeball, took a step sideways, and we moved on to bigger and better things. Silly me, I assumed that was the end of the horse-eating plastic bag... hardly. 

After a few walk-canter explosions (I guess he really wanted to run?), I made him do some collected walk work and then turned to head back to the barn. That was when we discovered that the aformentioned plastic bag had blown up against the fence on the left side of the driveway, and we would have to walk right past it. We got maybe 12 feet away, Limerick saw it, side stepped a little (meanwhile, I'm kicking him as hard as I can), turned, spun around, and bolted forward maybe 5 or 6 strides, until we were back in the grass. At this point, I realized that he was being stupid on/very near gravel, which I was not going to fall off on, so I calmed him down and hopped off. Then, I led him back to the head of the driveway, trying to get him to walk past the plastic bag.. he still wouldn't go and started to try to back away, so I smacked him. He was being stupid and not using his brain, and hitting him apparently set off total chaos inside his little pony head, because he ripped the reins away from me and full-out galloped back to the barn. 

I could have killed him I was so mad, but I calmly went to retrieve him from Kimmie, got back on, and walked around the ring for a few more minutes until he stopped huffing and puffing and wasn't on fire... I haven't been out to the barn since then (I HATE SCHOOL), but I now have a dressage lesson tomorrow in the hopes that we can teach Mr. Limmers how to carry himself. I'll report back!

However, upon reflection, I'm quite certain that Limerick's attitude of late is a definite sign that he needs to be adjusted again. This is a work in progress, but hopefully the chiro will be out in the next week to do his back!

Schooling Day!

Lately, I've had a lot of people telling me that I need to get Limerick off the farm as often as possible, so I have decided to start seizing all of the opportunities that are thrown my way. Unfortunately, I waited too long to write this post, so I don't remember all of the details. But, here's the short version: 

Limerick was a gem, a saint, and the perfectest pony I could ever ask for, all rolled up into one big ball of love! I was nervous about how he would act off-property (nutty reputation, remember..), so I wasn't riding my best and kind of relied on him to make the decisions. He totally took care of me! We jumped around in the indoor at the farm, had a full jump lesson with S, and then headed outside to test his behavior in the outdoor. At that point, I had remembered how to use my legs/hands/body/brain, so we actually had some lovely trot and canter work. We also had quite a funny moment where I bumped Lim with my spur for a trot-canter transition, and we crow-hopped/cow kicked for a couple of small circles... it was like riding some weird up and down rocking horse, and I was giggling the whole time :)  

Anyways, Collyn was kind enough to record a good portion of our jump lesson, so here you go:

Also, a huge thanks to her for hauling us there!! Obviously, it couldn't have happened without her awesomeness!

Every Party has a Pooper

First off, I want to say thank you for each and every comment on my last post! You were all extremely helpful and I LOVE when people write "novels"... more for me to think about and learn from :) 

Unfortunately, Limerick was a freight train today and had no interest in going in a frame, which resulted in one massive tug-of-war and battle of wills. Guess who won? Oh yeah, him. However, I'm done being negative Nancy, and I'm fully expecting to have a wonderful time tomorrow at our schooling day. Collyn and S are going with me, so I'll get a lesson of sorts and hopefully some good evidence of Limerick's best behavior off property. Fingers crossed for me please, he has a reputation of being a nut in new places, especially when he gets separated from his BFFLs (funny joke, they don't actually like him). Since I was too pissed at Limerick to take any pictures, here are some random ones from the past few days:

Limerick who? More than willing to trade grumpy old-fart horse for cute, snuggly puppy <3

From my parents for Vday :)

Attached to the stuffed animal! I couldn't stop smiling when I picked them up at the post office :)

The center of my life right now/the bane of my existence... ORGANIC CHEMISTRY.