I have a saddle on!! Why? What for? I am pony, wild and free! I cannot be tamed. Or not. . .
So sunny!
I am pretty comfortable on the hills. I can see everything, put up a foot, and relax. Here, I was watching the big farm equipment harvest the crops.
Still sunny!
I have mastered my balance on the way down the hills. I always think that there is food for me between all the rocks.
What is this? Why do I have a towel on my head?
Allie says we are training to be like Pippin and Chesna and ride blindfolded, bareback, and bridle-less. Allie has a looong way to go before that happens!
I spent the weekend on the beautiful west coast of Michigan for my friend's wedding. We stayed at a wonderful Bed and Breakfast, it was so cute. Wrap around porch and balcony, dainty little library under the stairs, gorgeous grounds. . .it was a dream! The reception was also at this B&B and the wedding took place on the beach of Lake Michigan. It was quite the mini-vacation for me and Mike.
On to Shyloh. . .Based on previous experiences of me not seeing Shyloh for a number of days in a row, I was under no impression that I would be warmly greeted with nickers and neighs. Shyloh did not disappoint. As I went to get her in the pasture, this was her response as I called for her. . .
I got a bigger greeting from Robbie :(
I brought Shy in so I could groom her and get to work on that rear end. And of course, Shy had somehow managed to get hurt in my absence.
Somehow, it is on the inside of her left rear. This is after I cleaned it up.
I warmed Shy up in the round pen, with her new saddle pad. She was not impressed. After a few warm up walks and trots each way, I stretched her legs out.
Now she matches her boots!
Then we moved on to the hills! Hills, hills, and more hills! These hills are not alive with the sound of music, though. Just the sound of mini horses and dirt bikes and cows. But, I got some video.
Does it look like Shy is using that rear end? After that, I hosed her rear end off and started bringing other horses in and feeding them. It is getting dark noticeably earlier now. Sad face.
We are sticking to the plan of hills and trot poles until I can see some improvement in her rear end. Then we will take it from there. Does anyone know how long it takes for a horse to build muscle?
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.
