Trouble?

"Maybe next time I'll choose the poetry." He left planting a nice big kiss on Roomie's left cheek, despite his disinterest in the performers she'd dragged him out to see...  and, forgetting his sunglasses and leaving her on the lookout, the next morning, his very nice rings.  She'd wished she'd worn a dress out, to make it more like a date!

When she snuggled in to his arms, it felt like a good fit.  Had she actually admitted wishing to lean into him like that for a whole week prior?  "That time we were so close together, harnessing the horses, I got the urge to want this. I wondered what it would feel like..." He was surprised to hear it.

*

Jill had posted an excerpt from a documentary with the caption "i am part horse."  a friend commented, 

"which part?" and she surprised herself with the instant answer, "heart."  He wooed her with a kind closing comment "then you have a big heart amigo."  For some reason that reminded her of Lily, who had been beaten and was a bit skittish and who Jill had really connected with, at age 9. A sweet tiny chesnut as timid as she was then, herself.

In the barn Jill stood staring at the board like she was brain dead and then sat with a thud on the brush box. She was sitting there like a lump wondering if she could actually ride and then teach when she noticed her boss/teacher, who was in the barn, noticing her in the early morning.

"I'm sick" she said

"You look it." the boss answered.

"If I ride, I won't have the energy to teach" Jill said.

"That's okay, saddle up."

Jill thought some bosses came straight from heaven.

As she tacked up Jill was remembering all those times when her dad had coached her in professional situations.  You know those times when everyone is mad at you and working against you because they resent that you got the position instead of them? 

"Just show 'em why YOU got the job," he would counsel, and his advice worked every time.

Lunge Lesson Results

Jill hoped that one day, the cat tracks and the hoofprints could be made at the same time.  Some kind of equine-feline pas des deux!

*
When Katie, her coach found out Jill's sponsor had registered her in a clinic with Katie's teacher, she got determined to fix Jill's flat work, pronto.  They had a lunge lesson.

*
Jill just about fell off when the woman announced, "you have a lovely deep seat." ha

Old Fashioned Love

unmade bed, photo Kim Logue

Roomie did not know exactly how she got programmed with such old fashioned values. Was it her role models?

She told Jill that at her grandma's funeral her grand dad cried, as he said "On our 50th wedding anniversary, she smiled at me and said, "I only wish I had met you sooner."

Jill felt like her relationship with her horse pal had come to a new level lately. "As corny as it sounds, I think he really, really likes me." she'd enthused to random unknown stablemate. "And, I've realized that I love him."

As for the new human love interest on Roomie's mind, more than one ex-girlfriend still seemed interested in him, or so Jill guessed from some of the new traffic on Roomie's blog, after appearing on his facebook wall. Was it ridiculous to hope that a guy she had so recently started dating would see her exclusively?

Tomorrow Roomie vowed to do more canter-walk, walk-canter, counter canter and just plain drawn out long canter exercises while she pondered such things.

Jill remembered bringing the rescue kitten home from vet with the prognosis, "either he's going to get over it or he's not." She'd never been counting on taking on prohibitive medical costs, but she wanted then, anyway she could to do her best to make this little animal more comfortable, as a house cat.  Now, should she let both of them return to their true roots as farm field felines? This whole moving to the farm thing was going to be a major adjustment for her too. She thought that they would want to go with her, and use the cat door to a heated tack room with good food in it, even though they couldn't stay overnight in her bed anymore. While she pondered it, Roomie's ex's record played in the background "I still don't get to touch you when you sleep, guess I'm gonna be lonely."

In passing making breakfasts Jill announced, The more time I spend up there, and the more waivers I get signed and discuss in detail with folks I'm asking to autograph it, the more I think that having that horse on the property is extra high risk, conduct as the HOST of guests, potential students, partboarders or boaders; I see in him a supercharged propensity to behave in ways that might result in injury, harm or death to persons and the other horses around him. I see his high potential to collide with, bite, kick or run over other animals, people, or objects.

I will ask if we should we prioritize finding him the right human parter as a priority. Truthfully, I am unclear about his potential as a useful riding horse and in all honestly I don't like to be around the so-pronounced unpredictability of his barely equine, possibly very surprising reaction to such random things as sounds, sudden movement, tremors, vibrations, unfamiliar objects, persons or other animals and hazards such as subsurface objects…

"Don't give up on the place Jill, he's just one horse." Roomie said it quietly, suprising Jill as they made a meaningful moment of eye contact.  And reminded her about the new station manager who announced after visiting  "Well that was safer than some of the other escapades you've had me out at. At least we didn't almost get killed.  Wondering whether I mean the ostrich's? Or, do you think mean the psycho horse running towards the gate???  ha ha.  But I can't partboard here yet, I don't have the skills for these horses."

Ricky sleeps, photo Kim Logue

Meet Ace

An apartment on a farm with no pets? Jill was considering it, and thus converting her cats back into barn cats, because she knew she would always be in the stable and not in the home anyway. Better yet was that even before she'd agreed to move in, Jill was being given a new horse project.  Hooray! Finally!  She was getting paid, albeit farm hand wages, to train an athletic young warmblood, with excellent breeding and latent potential.

Now that he was looking so healthy and happy, and she was being asked to turn her attention to him, she realized how much he reminded her of her handsome Rio.

With that partner, Jill finally actually felt the difference between warming a horse up for stadium work, vs. warming up on the flat. She had long known there was a difference and dutifully shortened her stirrups two holes each time to implement the process, She would lighten her seat and use half seat or two point position, with her reins shortened... But, Rio was the first time, that she could truly feel the difference in the horse. He had a jumper style for jumper work and it put Jill into true balance with him.  His hind end was engaged, as in for his best dressage, and he was bending and flexible but he was up in front. He stayed up. She could really feel what it meant...  When the teacher outlined the next exercise, the oblivous boarder that usually hogged the arena spooked Jill saying "I will halt" as she began. They whipped effortlessly around all the obstacles in the challenging course exercise the coach had dictated and Jill was pleased to learn to enjoy jumping very big jumps, from the horse's enthusiasm and talent for it!

She basically swooned when her teacher confirmed it out loud, "He will take care of you." Jill believed and Rio came through.

It was so sad when he was sold out from under her so early in their relationship.  She had been looking forward to the day he would pack her around a Training Cross Country course...

 Meanwhile, Jill was stood up twice that day. once by a new student and once by the man of her dreams... Even after she'd stumbled into Tronas, the cowboy who cleaned up so nice, and who followed/talked and walked with her around a beautiful cemetery, as a way she enjoyed getting to meet each together. To her friend she said, she was glad she'd had cowboy boots on in the moment, "They fit on okay, but they weren't comfortable. For riding or even for walking!" Despite how lucky it was she had them on, doing the trial, when he showed up in his, but she would be donating those hand-me-down cowboy boots away as soon as possible.   O u c h.

Was it true that Blundstones were on sale at the mall? She liked to get a new pair every year or two and only ever add to the collection, she never threw a pair out...  two summers in a row she'd gotten away with no sandals, sporting a skirt 'n boot fashion ha, and yes, it was always time for a new set.

To Move or Not To Move (That Stormy!)

"To teach a pony to lie down on command requires many steps," Roomie said, "the first, in my experience, is having a book out of the library about it." The student's parent looked amused rather than panicked so she continued "and from there, it's not much different than teaching a dog. In fact, the horses learn the pattern much faster than a dog. But, because the pony is so big, you need ropes to pull and gently push him down, cleverly engingeered like, when you say DOWN."

Roomie remembered the 10 camp kids leaning on that pig of a pony named Stormy with her. With a lunge line rigged the way the book said and they gently pulled a foot up and pushed down. Slowly... a little more and a little more, day after day.

"Mostly because we couldn't do anything ELSE with him, he was so lazy and stubborn. We decided to follow the steps in the book and by the end of the summer we got him to do it. Once." Jill ended the story with a smile

Those camp kids were the same "lifers" that she'd learned other things with. Like, how to be the boss of people who can do things you can't. There were a few kids that seemed to sign up to come every session all summer every year, and so they'd get inventive. Some of the kids in those good old days could canter standing on a horse's butt, with their arms in the air like an air plane. And they invented lots of groovy dismounts in those vaultage days too.

"That pony, by the way, used to buck me off in front of all those camp kids/students every once in a while too. Like they'd be trying to get him across the creek or something and get bucked off one by and one and so then I'd get on him to school him for once and for all and he'd buck me off into the same heap as all them!

With no additional energy expended on his part whatsoever i assure you. he had a quite a practiced knack to my recollection... but back then i considered those episodes my opportunity to demonstrate the "you get back up and get back on" principle.  That stormy!"

Stormy had come to the Top Notch Riding Academy by mistake. He was an apoolosa/shetland pony cross that NOBODY expected, as in he was the accident that they didn't know had happened until the little pony named Mini was just about ready to pop him out!  She was the smallest pony in the whole barn, who lived in standing stall, and, was obviously, accidentally bred one night that renegade Rocky broke of his stall!
*
Jill had an offer to move.  So, the landlord horse i could to start riding or hanging out with does tricks on VERBAL command! She had never ever taught a horse to B O W before.,She wondered what shenanigins she could get up to on non-riding school private property, ha.