Monday, November 23, 2009

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like...

...well...spring actually. The MSN forecast says it may be 80 on Thanksgiving Day.

It was cloudy and looked like rain on Saturday. Ranae wants to apply for the Ride with the Best program at Equine Affair in February. She wants to do the Matt Sheridan clinic on Trail Classes. We had to shoot some video for the audition. I'm not real crazy about her doing this. Her horse has a reputation for dumping her when he gets in a tight spot and with costumes, carriages, and strange looking horses, the place is rife with tight spots. Nevertheless a husband's role is to support his spouse and, after airing my concerns, we went out and shot some footage.

We set up the gate, cones, a tarp, a tire pull, and a backup "L" and worked shooting each obstacle. After we finished, it was too late to go for a ride so, I took Jessie back there and we worked on our exercises. We are accumulating the loping miles. She is so much easier now to control. I worked on our nemesis the bending at the walk and back-up exercises trying to use as little pressure as possible. That's tough. We also worked on the side-pass at the fence.

Sunday we waited until it warmed up a bit before heading out. We did a basic ride out to the alfalfa field to work on some exercises and then to the big square for some loping fun. We set out some 13" pipes from a construction zone and played with "jumping" over those.

Ranae is on vacation this week. Not sure if I'll get to ride too much with family in town. If not, I'm sure Jessie could use the time off ;>)

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