Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Work in progress...
Here is what I have since the infamous vanishing of my last post.


2/25, Monday, Day off- 'School' at Panera, with a cup of coffee of course. Shopping adventure with Rachel and Ally in the afternoon. Yes, I did go shopping and I lasted much longer than normal (for those who dont know I have a shopping allergy  after about 20 minutes I get cranky and can even get physical sicknesses from it. But hey thats probably a good thing :p

2/26, Tuesday, I was lucky enough to work at Michael Barisone's for the day. After taking an unplanned tour of Deer Run, then driving back through Deer Run to go back the way I came only to arrive at White Fences without the gait code and having to call in a few times I got to the stable only an hour and a half late. I worked through my anger towards Siri by helping Michael's working students muck stalls. Then the typical feeding and watering and sweeping. According to the girls at the stable we made really good time so I was able to watch Michael teach some lessons as well as ride. Once my sweeping and tack cleaning skills were up to par, including learning and perfecting the Barisone way to hang a bridle, I was able to take a lesson. Nick the horse chauffeur and Eleni delivered Leo and helped me tack up, thanks guys! My lesson was focused on keeping Leo forward and reaching towards the bit. And when something goes wrong "dont buy into the bullsh**, just sit there and he will figure it out!" 

2/27, Wednesday, lesson with Lendon. I also worked with Cindy on a 'machine' called a biocored. The biocored is a series of adjustable intensity bungee cords with handles that we attached to, in our case, a swing set. The exercises we did use controlled instability to activate muscles, especially those in the core. Working with Cindy also helped to elongate my muscles and the body awareness tests we did helped me to feel where all parts of my body were- this was great for my ride with Lendon. In the evening we had a lecture with Don Later in the stable. Don is an internationally know farrier. His theory on shoeing KISS, keep it simple stupid. Well he didnt exactly say that but he does believe that the simplest shoeing possible is the best shoeing for your horse. 

2/28, Thursday, lesson with Lendon. Lecture with Melanie Taylor an Olympic gold medalist and World Cup winner for Show Jumping, breeder of polo ponies, and a practitioner of Buck Brannaman’s form of natural horsemanship. Melanie told us about her experience at the Olympic as well as her riding career but what she seemed to be the most proud of is the difference that natural horsemanship has made in her work with horses. Some quotes from her talk “Awareness gives you feel. Feel gives you timing. Timing gives you accuracy. Accuracy gives you the ride.” “The measure of a great horseman is one who searches for knowledge in all aspects” “you cant replace a good work ethic, determination, and drive” “Its always better if what you want is the horse’s idea first”

3/1, Friday, instead of having our usual hack day Melanie Taylor offered to teach us in a group jump lesson. After some warm up work with accessing the horse’s individual legs (and therefor their balance) we did cavaletti work on angle lines and bending lines. Then Melanie had us do an excercize in timing and communication. We paired up in groups of two and we would each go down opposite bending lines, meeting in the middle, we started in trot over the ground rails then transition up to canter over the x’s and back through the other way. The goal was to have each of the riders in the group go over the rails and do their transitions at the same exact time. I would have to say that Nick and I were pros J. A huge thank you to Melanie for taking the time to teach us!!
After our lesson we had a lecture/demo with horse handler Phil Silva. Phil taught us the proper way to jog our horses for vet inspections, everything from how to hold the reins to the proper turning technique. Each of us were able to jog our horses in front of ‘vet’ Lendon and ‘coach’ Phil. Other than the need for a little more enthusiasm on Leo’s part our technique was approved, looks like we are all set for our CDI :p (we should probably get through second level first, but hey we are ready when the time comes).

3/2, Saturday, before my ride today Melanie Taylor came out again and did some ground work with Leo (and I). Before she works any of her horses she takes them out in a rope halter with a twelve-foot line and does ten or fifteen minutes of ground work. This is really just a practice in focusing the horse to your aids. Leo really benefitted from this and we went on to have one of our best rides ever! We were able to do much more consistent and drama free lateral work and even did two changes (after the first one each way was clean, after not doing changes for 2 months, we didn’t need any more J. A big thank you to Melanie, you definitely get credit for this amazing ride!
Then part two with Phil on judging conformation. We practice judged a few of the horses and got to hear some of Phil’s stories on his work being a horse handler- if you ever want to hear some cool stories and have a good talk call this guy.

3/3, Sunday, Lesson with Lendon- not as amazing as yesterday but still pretty dang good. I started off with the groundwork again {jumping into the future, I am doing groundwork with him every day before I ride}. Lecture with Lisa Schmidt, “R” judge. She walked us through the process of working up the levels of judging as well as telling us a bit about her own journey.

It is hard to tell from the length of my summaries but if you noticed that the last few days seemed a bit easy that would be because I took some time to hang out with my friend Andrea D who came down from Chicago to visit me. It was a lot of fun to show her around, we went to the beach, had some overly large but delicious mozzarella sticks, went bowling, as well as all kinds of other fun stuff J. Thanks for coming down Andrea-here’s your shout out, sorry it’s so late.

3/4, Monday, today I got a much-needed massage! Sleeping on a pullout and working with the horses for over two months has definitely made me miss my bed back home. I also trailered in one of the new girl’s ponies from a nearby barn. It’s late in the game but the barn is still a happening place. (even on Mondays)

3/5, Tuesday,Today we had the wonderful opportunity to spend the morning at Swedish rider/trainer Tinne Vilhelmsen’s stable. First off her property is gorgeous, her use of Real trees was quite nice (there aren’t many of those down here). Her horses and her riding were unreal. Maureen and I were convinced that they were holograms and everything we were seeing was a lie. Besides TInne’s beautiful seat and hands her use of transitions within movements struck a cord with me. For example on the first horse she worked with she did trot-walk-trot transitions within half pass and shoulder in to calm this horse whom she told us is especially hot. Tinne is a very calm and focused rider, which helps her quite a bit especially because she prefers the hotter horses. One of the other horses she brought out was similar to my guy Leopold in his personality and work ethic. It was awesome to see how she worked with this horse to keep him confident and not get too tense and nervous in the ring. This she said is the type horse she/we have to be the most focused on (I guess that means I’m in store for some quality focus time).
Once we got back to the barn Lendon gave us the opportunity to ride on our own, working with some of the things we saw. I, having watched my horse’s uber fancy twin, chose to take that opportunity and Leo performed well.   

3/6, Wednesday, Lesson with Lendon today. Then lecture with Arlene White in the Lox of the hatchee on horse physiotherapy. She taught us a sort of in stable fitness routine for horse’s, especially those on stall rest. With 30 repetitions per exercise per side she has found an impressive increase in the muscle tone of her horses. After taking us back into the barn to demonstrate these stretches she showed us an exercise band system that she uses with her horses. This system consists of a buckle equipped saddle pad and two large exercise bands, one under the horse’s belly and one behind him. This system has worked well for her and is definitely some food for thought. Then we all went out to buy our 20 lb bags of carrots, I see lots of stretching in the future.

3/7, Thursday, Lesson with Lendon. Lunch and Learn. And lecture with Lauren Sammis on horse sales.

3/8, Friday, After a quick morning gallop along the polo fields with Brittany we had a morning lecture with Bonnie Stetson on horse massage. She has developed a ‘Currassage’ method that she taught us. It is a basic massage using a currycomb that we can do to warm up and stretch out our horse’s muscles before a ride.

More to come, hopefully. Things are heating up as we near the end :( 
Tata for now-
Jenny 

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