Monday, September 26, 2011

Back Again

Well, I'm back to school again. I think that this is actually one of the first years that I've actually looked forward to school starting!

I'm all moved into my apartment, though there's still plenty to do organizational-wise. I love my little room, it's turned out quite nice if I do say so myself and it's so nice to have something bigger than the dorm I had last year!

Jetta seems to have settled in very well. I almost feel like we haven't been gone at all. There's a lot more horses that have moved in. I think there's 28 stalls and 20 of them are filled right now. There's this adorable drafty cross horse that's right next to Katy. Her name's Phoebe which I think fits her so well. She's almost as cute as Katy, she's just missing the spots :) And there's two very pretty Appy's on the other side. I adore things with spots, lol. Too cute.

I had a great ride on Jetta today after all my classes. She hasn't been ridden since our last trail ride so I was expecting a bit more theatrics but she was very good overall. I didn't canter her because I wanted to have a nice simple ride, so instead we worked on trotting and did lots of serpentines and circles with the focus of doing mini-leg yeilds to ask her to keep her shoulder from falling in. Then we did lots of leg yeilds at the walk. I really want to step up my game as a rider and trainer with Jetta because she's been under saddle for exactly almost one year and I really feel like I haven't taught her as much as I should. Part of it is because she's a much hotter horse than I've trained before, but that's about my only excuse. I think that in this stage of her training we should have leg yeilds and shoulder-in at the trot down, as well as good trot-canter transitions, simple lead changes, and walk-canter transitions. We don't have any of that. So my plan is to get my butt in gear and get working on that! Also, I really want to work more with trot and canter poles since we haven't done them consistently and I feel that they'll really help with our jumping work. I want to do pole work at least once, or better yet, twice a week. I want to do enough of it so that Jetta gets almost bored with it so that she can canter over the poles correctly. Lifted back, light on the forehand, nice connection to the hand, not rushing, etc. Not like our current style which basically consists of flinging herself haphazardly through the poles!



Creepy Robo Pony with glowy eyes!

After my post about Jetta's awesome feet last week, they decided to make me a liar and are looking pretty terrible right now. AC was supposed to come trim last week, but had a family emergency so she couldn't make it. She was supposed to call me to schedule a trim for this week, but hasn't yet. Jetta is in desperate need right now! Whenever she gets any extra length on her hooves, they just chip right up. And fast too. Her feet looked great last Monday. By Friday though they were looking rough. While it's not hurting her to have her feet looking like they do (they aren't super long at all and a lot of the length has chipped off) it's definitely ugly. I hope AC can come soon! This again illustrates why I need to hurry up and learn how to trim...

So yeah, that's basically life right now. One last question for anyone reading. Do you have any magic bot fly egg treatments? The horses at home had absolutely no bot eggs on them, but now Jetta is covered. They must be super bad up here! I was going to go buy a bot knife, but I was hoping that there were some easier/faster treatments out there. Any ideas?

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