Monday, July 11, 2011

Invasion of the Space Horse!!!


Izzy sports her fancy new fly sheet. When I first put it on Friday night, there was mass panic among the pasture horses. Why? Some ethereal apparition was floating along the road to Izzy's pasture. Was it Izzy's ghost? Was it an alien? WAS IT GOING TO EAT THEM???? They galloped and pranced and spooked.

Izzy was just as shocked as they were. I mean, she was walking along the same lane where they said the apparition was. Uh oh! Was it coming for her? What were they all looking at?

Quite the adventure. I like the sheet. No more huge welts on her back from nasty horsefly bites. Izzy seems fine with it, and the other horses have reluctantly accepted her as a fellow equine.

Also, Izzy got her second ride with our lovely backup rider, S.
They started out with some ground work to help Izzy learn to balance and stretch on her own. Ms. Mare was pretty lazy, but did ok. A few more sessions of this and hopefully she'll really start to understand the exercise. Basically, the point is to overbend the horse whenever she loses her balance. Then, when she comes back, she can find her own balance and work through her back better. It's a cool idea and I'm glad S is willing to work with her on it.
Off they go. It was a much better ride than last time, but they still had their troubles. Izzy has a pretty solid training/first level foundation, so S is asking her for some second level type collection--to really reach under with her hind legs, go forward, and carry herself in a shorter, higher frame. Izzy is ready for it and looks GREAT when she does it, but she's still not completely convinced that it's a good idea. I mean, that's way hard compared to giving pony rides to newbies.
Love the flippy tail. Here is one of their better moments. Izzy started well, then had a pretty fancy meltdown in which she pretty much bounced up and down like a pogo stick saying "no i won't go forward eff you you meanie mean meanie bad dressage lady i WON'T GO FORWARD".

Silly mare. She got herself sternly reprimanded for that, which seemed to clear her head, and then they were back to working well together.
They even got some decent canter out of it. Izzy didn't fuss about her sticky-ish right lead and in the end, she'd worked up a nice sweat. Of course, most of the sweat was from her evading and having a meltdown, but still. Some is better than none.

A video from Sunday. Not too exciting, but some nice work. Yay Izzy actually moving around!

7 comments:

  1. Wow, she looks great! What a pretty dressage pony :)

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  2. She looks good in the moments when she relaxes and goes forward a little, and how relieved you must be to have someone riding her for you a little! Hope you are doing ok and not in too much pain these days.

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  3. Izzy is looking good!

    That is funny about the sheet. The funniest part is when the horse that is wearing it has no idea what everyone else's problem is haha. Every time I get Angel's cart out every single horse but Angel and Klein has to trot to the end of their run and snort and throw little fits over it. Silly ponies.

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  4. Gosh she is just so beautiful! She looks really nice under saddle. I had a good giggle at "no i won't go forward eff you you meanie mean meanie bad dressage lady i WON'T GO FORWARD"...LOL!

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  5. She looks great. How lucky you are to have such a good rider work her for you while you are laid up. She is getting some nice balanced efforts from your girl.

    You are going to have such fun when you get to ride her again!!

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  6. You wanna hand over some of that gorgeous trot work you have going on?

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