On Tuesday, finally, we managed to get our new horse hauled down to our barn. After a couple false starts coordinating the trailer and her owners and ourselves, we were happy that the haul went smoothly. I was prepared to spend some time persuading the new girl that the trailer wasn’t scary, but she following… Read more »
Martin Black
Writing the Letter ‘A’
I had a pretty interesting lesson with my student last week. J is making great progress lately. She’s clicking well with Laredo, and also she’s now been riding with me long enough that at least a percentage of what we do has become habitual. This means we’re able to leave some of the basics and… Read more »
The One Where I Don’t Fall Off
Today was Steen’s birthday. He turned 13. My gift to him was a day off, which translated into some quality alone time with the bale. I rode Zoey today. We started off trying to saddle at the hitching post. In my efforts to be graceful with this, I tied my offside stirrup up with my… Read more »
A Long One
Brian wanted to check in with Bear today, since he seemed a little sore during our last ride. So we decided I would ride Steen and Brian would ride Bear first and Laredo second, so we brought them all in from the pasture to get them ready to go. I groomed one side of Laredo… Read more »
The Dirty One
It was again my turn to ride Laredo, who we have also been referring to as the dirty one. Sure enough we arrived at the barn to see him conked out on his side near the windblock, nestled into a soft mixture of mud and manure. He rolled up onto his belly when I got… Read more »
Back on the Kid
We’re definitely having a somewhat lackadaisical start the year in terms of riding. But the weather is never great in January, so we tend to figure we’ll get out there when we get out there and not worry too much about how often it is. Today it was time to get Laredo going again. Ever since he… Read more »
Rest
I was excited to get on Laredo again after everything we saw and learned at the Martin Black clinic. There was one young, green horse in the group of riders that often bucked when asked to lope, and a couple of other horses that were kicking up for various reasons. It was great that Laredo… Read more »
Back in the Spurs
For some reason, I stopped riding in my spurs this summer. I guess things were just going really well for Bear and I, and I wanted to see how just my legs would work. It turns out they worked quite well. But then I noticed some problems. Lately Bear has not been excited to walk,… Read more »
Ridin’ High
We were out of town Thursday thru Monday. We went to the Chicago area to audit a Martin Black clinic, which was great. The setting was small and intimate, only eight riders and a handful of auditors. Martin gave all the riders a lot of one on one attention, and we learned a whole lot… Read more »
Do More With Less
I’m not sure who said this first, probably Ray or Tom, but I know I’ve read it from a lot of people, most recently Martin Black. We found some great write ups of some colt starting clinics he put on a few years ago (click on the forward arrows to get through these if you’re… Read more »