Thursday, August 18, 2011

Day 3 Flex Track

After waking up at 3.30 am this morning with a serious case of diareahea and feeling like being sick (came close), I concluded something ate can't have agreed with me, maybe coupled with not enough water. So at 5.30 my tummy was a bit sore and I was a bit worried it would continue into the day after meals, but yay it didn't. By the time I had a shower and hit the road I was feeling better and back to normal by after lunch.



We had a demo by Pete, Jamie, and Mattie on saddling, bridling, vet and farrier prep, mounting, indirect and direct reins, lateral flexion, warming your horse up hard to ride soft, checking horse can walk, trot, canter and jump with saddle on....rather than find out he's not happy once you are on. Basically on doing everything to a Level 4 standard.


After lunch we split into Remuda's and I think it was 5 in each group, with one coach. We had group time then individual time and we decided on three tasks to focus on this week, and they gave us the ingredients to work on to help achieve those. Then we write daily summaries and can check in with him if we need to. Mine are freestyle canter follow the rail, online driving from 45ft, and maintain gait at canter! So now I have somethings to work on and even though I was the last to meet with Grady but it was nice sitting in the shade of the lodge verandah, and then when everyone was having dinner at 6 I went and got Heart. It was a little cooler then but best of all the playground was empty!!



I used the 22ft but will change to 45 tomorrow, now that I know she is fab. When I talked to Grady about the fact my horse is harder than Heart he said Pat always says - if there are 4 phases in whatever task they are practising, and your horse does in at phase one, then still go through all the phases like you would at home with your horse. Most if these things I can easily focus on with Heart though. She's still LBI after all. I'd say she'd have your number pretty quick if you were not used to Left Brain Introverts. She tossed her head when we were doing the Figure 8 for the testing, but I ignored it lol.

So I drove her from Zone 5 down the hill from the pen, and kept the other horses away from her, she swung her rear end at one gelding lol, cheeky thing. She wanted to turn left at the bottom but I asked her to turn right, she turned completely right and headed into the bushes. So I bumped the rope and sent her off again. We got to the playground and we did canter, practising maintain gait with the cross country jump (the one in the photo further up) and the long railway sleeper - my new strategies worked perfectly. She seems to enjoy jumping.

Then I yo yo'd her back and to me through the thing that's like two pole Walls with material on the sides. Not sure what it's called. This is one side.


Then we did driving from Zone 5 all the way back to the pen, when I opened the gate she just walked in so I asked her out again and asked her to back in.

She Nickers to me now when she sees me coming up the path. So sweet, wonder if LeAnn would notice if I squeezed her into my suitcase.?!

By now it was about 7.15pm so I had some BBQ while Pat played geeeeetar, and then I headed home.



This is a lovely sight each morning. Someone told me they saw elk playing in there not so long ago.


A lady told me today she heard on the news today there is a man drought in NZ!

Oh - and the cutest little chipmunks run around everywhere!!!



3 comments:

Cilla said...

Glad you are feeling better x

Twinnie said...

Hi, loving reading your posts and hoping you are staying well...

See you soon!!
Jxx

Unknown said...

Thanks guys, I'm nit even tired it's amazing. Imagine if I had tried to to this course a year ago!