Thursday, July 24, 2008

He's an A hole

This saturday is my D3 Pony Club rating, so this morning I practiced my stable wraps and "suppling exercises" on Isis. Isis is a very nice horse to practice on because she's more than happy to stand still. It was probably the easiest training session she's ever had - All I wanted her to do was stand still for me!! She came through in spades. What a sweetie.

Then I went for my jumping lesson. We did XC. Jill, Heidi, and Patty all came out with me so we all did XC together. It's so much fun when you're in a group, it's like an encouragment party. Jill was riding her off-track Thoroughbred mare and it was only her 2nd time on the XC course. She hadn't really done any XC jumping though, and when Jill tried the roll top her horse refused probably 10 times atleast. But then suddenly she made a flying leap, leaped over it several more times, and then it was like *click*! She got it!! And suddenly Jill was jumping 2'6" and 2'9" roll tops, banks, tires, drops, logs, tables... I am so happy for her! Jill is a great rider though too. The lesson started out well for me but we had some glitches over a table. For some reason we were jumping to the right on the jumps and it was quite awful. He kept doing it so Rocky finally was like "RIDE LEFT, GET ON HIS CASE!!" So I got on his case and then we were jumping straight for the rest of the lesson. We were having so much fun together we rode for 2 hours!!

This evening I rode Grady and he was ok. Not the best he's been but certainly not the worst. No major spooks or mishaps, he actually worked quite nicely but it took some time to get him to relax at the canter. This morning while we were tacking up for our ride I was telling Patty (who is Rocky's mom by the way) about the issues I have with Grady. When I was done describing how he gets spookier the more familiar with an area he gets, Patty just simply said "he sounds like an a**hole. We had a horse here like that once, he was just a mean a**hole." She described that horse and he sounded aLOT like Grady. To be honest I've been thinking this for quite awhile now, but it was nice to hear an experienced horse woman give the same diagnosis, even if she's never met Grady before. I really think it's true... I really think Grady IS just an a**hole. So I'm looking forward to Lindsay's and Rocky's opinions on him.

SO... EX.... CITED!!!!

1 comment:

Dressage Nomad said...

Poor Grady! I hope that that isn't the real diagnosis and that your new instructor can come up with a training plan that will keep his mind so engaged he doesn't have any brain cells idle enough to think of new shenanigans in familiar places!