Good Ladybug

Edit: I wrote this before I was in the accident but I wanted to thank all of you for your comments. It means a lot :) I was extremely sore yesterday and actually went to the hospital. They told me I had whiplash and gave me some pain meds and told me to take it easy for a few days. I dodged not being able to ride but we had a snow storm yesterday and today so I won't be going to the barn. Tomorrow the high is -9* so we'll see if I go out then. Luckily next week is still forecast to be in the 20s and 30s so I'll be there every day!

First, to explain the title I always used to call female horses Lady. Not as in the name but the way you might say "Hey ladies!" to your friends. With Katai, since she's my adorable little bug it turned into Ladybug :)

The adorable little bug herself

Second, I just want to say that Katai is a good girl. The reason that I don't talk about her spooking, bucking, leaping, bolting, kicking, biting, etc is that she just doesn't. Especially after working with Jane, she just doesn't do anything other than get a bit tense, rush a bit, trot sideways a bit, or possibly giraffe for a stride or two and that's more confusion or when she's feeling a little stiff than an actual "no" response.

You can just feel the pre-ride excitement 

As an adult amateur who personally doesn't have the guts to deal with a big powerful horse that  doesn't always want to play this is absolutely perfect for me. It's the most amazing feeling to go to the barn and know that one way or another we're going to have a productive ride. Of course sometimes I feel better about rides than others and I'm consistently on the struggle bus with figuring out all of these new skills that Jane is patiently trying to teach. However, Katai has been right along for the ride which makes the struggle bus a much less lonely place.

P is for Pony and also Perfect and Princess ;)

She's still a horse and sometimes she still decides to blow me off. Sometimes when it's chilly out and you're a pony and your feet have grown wings and you're stretchy trotting so your rider has less half halting ability it's a lot more fun to go fast than to listen. I wasn't asking for much, just that she slightly slow down based on my escalated seat cues but slowing my posting wasn't working, using my seat wasn't working, picking up my reins wasn't working so I went to pulling on my reins and to be frank, it took a pretty big pull to make a difference. I HATE pulling on her mouth but a "trotting" away pony needs to listen at some point and I'd given her almost too long (more than half of the arena) to make a change.

We're riding at 3* like a badass

After I corrected her we walked for a bit, did a transition to trot (which was beautiful :-) and then I asked her for stretchy trot again. Going down the long side again her feet grew little wings and we were nearly cantering. I started with my posting, then my seat, and finally barely picked up the reins and this time she immediately slowed her trot. What I was really happy about was that there was no over reacting and she stayed stretched down into contact. I ended on that because we were already at the end of a great ride but it's being added to our homework for the next few weeks.

Speaking of Sweater Weather

 

I think I’m going to need to do a trace clip at some point. Pony has four inch long icky hair and her eyeballs were sweating after a short amount of trotting. I had to walk her for about half an hour alternating cooler and bare to cool her to the point where I was comfortable putting her out and that was only because it wasn’t windy since she was still a bit wet. I’ve never clipped a horse before but I’ve clipped a lot of goats for dairy shows and 4-H so I get the concept however I don’t have a clipper.

I did have a trimmer but it mysteriously disappeared and it wouldn’t have done the job anyway. I was mainly using it for desensitization since it was useless for anything I wanted to do including trimming her bridle path. That means that I am in the market for a clipper. No one at the barn has them so there aren’t any that I can borrow. As mostly casual trail riders my fellow boarders don’t have the need since they mainly stay at the walk and don’t ride unless it is nice out with only a couple of exceptions.

I’m hoping to stay in the $90-$150 range and it doesn’t need to be extremely high powered since I’m mainly planning on doing a light trace clip on a very small horse as needed during this time of the year. I’m willing to take my time but I want them to last and not be toooo noisy since it will already take a lot of desensitization. Do any of you have any suggestions of what works well or what to stay away from?

I've be looking at these and these.

In other news I was at the barn again tonight but I didn’t have a lot of time since I was going to hang out with EJ (my new boyfriend?) so I just did some stuff on the ground and medicated Katai’s hooves. Her new bridle came in the mail yesterday so I spent some time getting that set up and isn’t it cute!! I also worked with her on how to properly respond to pressure on one side. She’s been getting pretty frazzled when I ask her to yield her hindquarters and has been backing up and throwing her head around so I wanted to take it back a couple of steps and work from the ground. She figured it out fairly quickly and was much more relaxed with me on the ground.