Back to School

Today was the first day back to school for me and while I was not looking forward to it, I was in a surprisingly happy mood despite the rain and class!

This term I'm taking Animal Nutrition: Feed & Ration Formulation which I feel kind of split about. Part of it is identifying feeds which I will have no problem with, the other part is using equations and computer software to calculate feed rations which sounds rather boring. This is mostly geared towards meat animals/chickens so it's not as interesting as it could be if it were horses, but at the same time I had the possibility of taking an Equine Nutrition course this term and 1) I don't like the professor and 2) I have a lot of experience with basic equine nutrition so this class also sounded rather boring especially since it also uses the same computer software as the other class.

The class I'm really excited for is Equine Reproduction, my first 400 level class! I'm thinking this is something I might really want to do as a vet. I'm actually thinking this will be a rather easy class. I took the general animal reproduction that's required for animal science (316) and then also applied repro (317)  last term and it was very difficult, but fun, and I passed it with an A. This will be much simpler because it's everything that I've already done, just with one species. Plus, this class has open note/book tests! Basically awesome. Although, I will admit that horses are weird so I'll have to learn the differences between horses and every other animal out there.  There is a lot of out of class work, but that's the trade off I guess.

I'm taking a fiction writing class just to fulfill a requirement, so that should be interesting... then there's Biochemistry. Another 400 level class and it's supposed to be really, really hard. Harder than Microbiology which was one of the hardest classes I've ever taken. Add in the fact that I'm taking it online and this term may really suck.

But back to horses. I moved Jetta up yesterday without any problems and was excited to ride today. So nice to have an indoor arena, I miss it when I go home! I do feel bad about rudely taking Jetta from her big pasture and buddies and sticking her in a stall for my own pleasure though. Her neck bump is almost completely gone so I'm thinking her and Tux just got into a kicking match (oh ponies...) so I rode today. It's been about a week since her last ride so I was expecting some resistance but she was mostly good.

Adorable picture I got of three of my favorite ponies at home.

We did some long and low work as per our first lesson with KO. She loves it. She was a bit sticky as if she was going to throw her trademark "I don't want to work" tantrum, but she didn't so I was happy. To the left she was really good and even gave me some really nice canter transitions which is something we really, really need to work on. As KO stated "If you make sure that every canter transition is perfect, then they will be perfect every time". If she tries to rush or toss her head into the transition, then we start over. To the right was not as good. She didn't want to hold contact with the bit and actually kicked up when I asked for the canter, then was tense and rushy when we went back to the trot to try again so we started all over again building up from the walk on a loose rein, to a trot on a loose rein, to gradually more and more contact at the trot until she was ready to try to canter again. We finally got a respectable canter transition, then finished with some of the best trot serpentine's we've probably ever had. Both directions we got some very nice leg yields despite my lack of spurs or a whip which is quite amazing for us.

It's nice to be back at school (for now at least!) but I'm already missing Tux. I liked having him up here, just wish I could afford to board two horses! To make up for it though, since I don't have class tomorrow I'm going to take a lesson with KB again on him which will be fun.