We are Back in Business!

So I'm back up at school today, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. For one, I don't have to keep coming up to here to ride or get things (such as my textbooks. I think I drove up here three or four times last week!) but I don't get to hang with my family or my animals at home and I actually have to go to class. But I'm really excited for this term because I have better classes. I got rid of Animal Science 100 - Orientation, which was a total bore, as well as Global Women's Studies, which just wasn't my thing, and I have replaced those classes with some ACTUAL Animal Science classes: ANS 121 - Intro to Animal Science, which should be easy as I have raised beef, swine, horses and poultry at some point but nevertheless it should be enjoyable. I also added ANS 280 which is Companion Animals, which focuses on cats and dogs as well as a little bit with lizards, pet birds, rabbits and pocket pets such as hamsters. So I'm looking forward to it.

In other news, I went out and worked with Jetta. It is freezing today. I felt like I was going to end up with icecicles hanging off my nose. I just did ground work today - some free-lunging, then some work on the lunge line and working on getting Jetta to move her feet when I ask. She was super full of herself when I free-lunged her, though she still cantered around in a small circle around me. Which made me feel special ;) Lunging went ok, but she was not happy about having side reins- she kept leaning hard on them, then popping her head up, but I think they'll help with riding because then she only leans on herself and not me! She was kind of a brat about the ground work. She can be super pushy or just plain obnoxious when you're trying to do stuff with her. So I was asking her to move her shoulders, then her haunches, then back up, etc. She did really good on her near side, but the off side was terrible, so we'll have to work on that.

Wheee!

I think I've decided to keep the bridle. I love the quality and I had one of the ladies at the barn who rides dressage come look at it and she thinks it fits, but it's just a little stiff. I'm sure I'll get used to the chunky cavesson.

Poor Katy has a sinus infection. ML had the vet out because she was having a runny nose (which we figured was just a minor cold) which then evolved into a major runny nose with coughing. The vet gave her some antibiotics and she's also getting a vitamin C supplement, so I hope she'll get better soon.

That probably means that we aren't going to be going to the schooling show on the 15th, but we'll have to see. It would be the perfect introduction into showing and jumping at a show, it's close and cheap, but if Katy isn't better soon, we'll just have to cross that one off the list. But on the plus side there's a huge tack sale back home that we could go to. Not that I really need anything, but it can't hurt to look :)

Luckily there's another show on the 23rd that we can go to. It's slightly larger (translation: there'll be more people that I can embarrass myself in front of), not as close, and just a little more expensive, but still a good venue. I'm hoping to go to as many shows as possible, depending on how much $ I have, so we'll see. I at least would like to go to a Sporthorse Breed show and do some conformation classes and a Materiale class.

I was looking at the new 2011 tests online (my test booklet hasn't come in the mail yet) and they're hard to find! At least anything higher than intro is. I learned that intro now has three tests instead of just the two, and the third test has cantering! So we might be stuck at intro for a while until we can control our canter. I'm hoping to get a 70% or two before moving up to training level, just so I know that we've covered all of the basics.

If you need the new tests, here's a link that has all the tests from Training Level up, then this one has intro and misc tests, but you have to be a member and log in I think.