Enjoying a warm winter day with Gypsy

I took Gypsy out for a ride yesterday and today. The weather has been blissfully warm (above zero for the past several days), so I wanted to take advantage of it before we lost it.

I just rode her in the bareback pad and rope hackamore and mostly walked/trotted around my brother-in-law's property where the snow is nice and deep and untouched. So less chance of her slipping -- like on the road where it's packed and icy.

She started out moving pretty forward like she usually does, but bumping her back and/or turning circles in deep snow eventually got her to slow and relax. She seemed to enjoy the break as much as I did. I didn't have an agenda... just wanted to enjoy the rides as much as possible! The sun on the untouched snow was stunning. It was so nice and quiet and clean and peaceful. I really enjoyed it. And Gypsy got a couple pretty good workouts in that snow!

Sorry the photos are a bit blurry... my daughter took a couple through the willow from our side of the fence, and the camera focussed on the willow!

Put-your-nose-on-it with Skittles

FINALLY some warm weather! Yay! It was gorgeous today (+6/+7C)! I spent some time playing with Skittles around the yard. She tends to pay better attention to me when we're in an arena. In the big outdoors, there are TONS of distractions, so it's more of a challenge for her to pay attention and stay left-brained. So I figure we should do lots more scary stuff outside to help this.

Today we just played "put your nose on it". I would drive her up to a variety of objects all around the house and ask her to put her nose on it. To add to the challenge, I did it on her "bad" side (right side). Our first objects were the big round hay bales... she had no problem putting her nose on those! She also took a couple big mouthfuls. Then we tried some buried flower pots, my picnic table, the trampoline, a few trees, a birdhouse, a taboggan and the big black garbage bin beside the house. She had the most trouble with this one because it was right next to the back step and we had our compost bin on the step which had a compostable bag flapping around in the wind. So we did some approach and retreat with that one as well as some squeeze beside it a few times. She eventually did put her nose on it, but didn't really relax. I left it at that... we can come back to that later! I also brought her into the garage a few times and up and down the driveway insisting she stick with me (at my shoulder). She didn't do as well today as she did while we were in the arena last weekend, but we'll build on it.

She did great with putting her nose on everything. She's a smarty-pants. She figured out what I was asking after about the 2nd try. And every new thing I brought her to she put her nose on. She's still pretty right-brained, but if I keep doing this along with other games, she'll get as good outside as she is inside.

"Stick to me" with Skittles

We've had a long, cold, miserable and busy December, so my poor horses hardly saw me all month. Now it's January and it's time to get back in the saddle, so to speak!
I took Skittles out to Rafter XX last Saturday to play with her along with Tamara and Gitana. I've been DYING to play with my horses, so I really enjoyed it. I only wish I could have stayed longer!

My trailer was so buried, after I dug it out and hooked up the truck, I STILL had to get my husband to pull me out with the tractor. Crazy! But we made it. REALLY wish I had a 4X4!

Skittles hopped into the trailer without hesitation -- almost as if she was anxious for some change too. We played for nearly 2 hours on line working on circling, transitions, weave patterns and weave-within-circle patterns, sideways, squeeze, sideways+squeeze, squeeze over jumps, put-your-nose-on-it (even a scary roping dummy!), and lots of stick-to-me as well. Tamara gave me some excellent ideas of how to keep her interested and engaged (she gets bored and ornery once she's "got" the pattern), so I'm definitely going to use her suggestions, such as using cones on a circle and varying between weave, circle inside, or circle outside or choosing one of them as a target to change direction etc. etc. Lots of great ideas.

Skittles has always been really good with all the games when I'm on her left side, but really is uncomfortable and struggles with me on her right. So I spent a fair bit of time playing on her right side until she got more relaxed (even though the video below shows me on her left! Oops!). She was awesome. She had so much try in her Saturday, and she was so relaxed and trusting, that I felt almost like it had only been a couple days (rather than more than a month) since I last played with her. She did great. She loves to jump, so we did lots of squeeze over jumps and stick-to-me over jumps and Tamara graciously taped one of them (attached below for your viewing pleasure).

After all that I decided to jump up on her bareback and work on her yielding to my leg. She was doing great, but then got spooked when Jeanne came in with Maverick. It wasn't terrible, but just enough to get me sliding sideways (she's slippery!). She did disengage nicely, but I was sliding off her anyway, and fell. She jumped away from me, but didn't go far and in no time she was beside me again snorting and looking baffled. :-) Even though I fell off, I was actually pleased with her. She didn't explode like she used to. And if I had been in a saddle, I wouldn't have fallen off at all.

I got back on and she was blowing and relaxed in only a couple minutes, and we continued doing sideways both ways and turns on the haunches. She's going really well to the right, but still struggles to the left. But I'm thrilled with her building confidence.