Tuesday, September 4, 2012

king of the mountain

Or princess of the hill. In all my blah-ness, I often can't see the big picture. But thanks to the uplifting comments and suggestions from Carrot Top, Martine, 4RRanch , Camryn, Dreaming, and Danielle, I pulled myself out of my self-pity funk and put Shyloh to work.

I dragged some poles out the the round pen. I set a single pole up and a set of three up on the opposite side. What an hilarious disaster to start with! Here is my drawing of the initial path Shy took. She acted like she had never seen a pole before and refused to go over them!
Can you follow this? Try this pattern times 3!
But once she got over herself, she was great! I had Shy do a ton of trotting in each direction and I could see her working her rear end. Being able to see makes a huge difference to me.
Work it!
Work it real good!
After that, a light bulb popped over my head. Dreaming had mentioned using the manure pile as a hill,  but it is not high right now and it is so yucky. But we do have asphalt hills!
I am still not sure what they are for, but hey, we were gonna try them out. Shy did go up them once with a tire half attached to her!

Shy surprised me by actually going up the hills without much problem. I could tell she was really working herself to get up the hills so we did not spend much time on those. These options were much more fun than being in the arena!
Climbing up! We can do it!

At the top! Made it! Tallest Haffie in all the land!
In between hills, she wants to take the short route.
At the top of the tallest hill!
We did the hills again another day and Shy is getting more and more comfortable with them. We can go over all three hills without having to stop at the top and survey all they land around us. The first time we did the hills, we did a there and back, there and back. I counted that as two sets. The next time we did three sets. I plan to keep increasing our sets to work those muscles! And bonus. . .it is a workout for me too!
Princess of the hill! She can keep an eye on all she owns from here
Gotta go down down down down. . . 
Shy went to the other side of the mountain to see what she could see. . .dirt bikers.

15 comments:

  1. Hooray! You're turning your barn into Gold's Gym for Horses!

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  2. Replies
    1. Thanks! And, as a plus, it is another texture for her hooves!

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  3. Glad you are sounding more positive. I thought later about lunging over the poles so you wouldn't have to run back and forth, glad you thought of it too. Good job.

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    1. I had some help with that thought! But I am feeling much more positive now.

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  4. A new motto for you "Adapt, Improvise, Overcome"! Awesome

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  5. Love it! Her feet with love all the different surfaces, too. Boy, Shy is adorable.....

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    1. Thanks! I think she has to be cute. . .sometimes her little attitude is too much!

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  6. Oh my God, your horse is really adorable :)
    It made me smile the whole time when I looked at the pictures - and usually I'm definitely no haflinger-fan!
    But I've ridden a haflinger, too when I lead a rider's project in june and it was really amazing. I've never expected a haflinger being so good on dressage!
    Btw I just want you to know that I'm not one of those dressage freaks who think ponies are no real horses - I own an Icelandic Horse :D

    So, damn, I'm just talking far too much.
    In a few words: I really like your blog and your horse and now I'm following you! :)
    If you want you may take a look at my blog (which is not a blog about horses, there are just a few posts about them) - though it might be hard for you to understand the text cause I'm writing in German. But there you can see my Icelandic horse :)

    Much love,
    Jònadis ♥

    (www.alaska-s.blogspot.com)

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    1. Haflingers are quite amazing little horses! Thanks for stopping by :)

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  7. Gosh she is such a barbie doll of a horse.
    Glad you found some new play things!

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  8. So cute seeing Shy up on the hills awwww!!!!!!! Good job finding fun stuff to do! You will have her in shape in no time at all. :D

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