Deciding on a Day

     Hopefully sometime today I can convince my instructor, my horse, and my parents to trailer me out to the beach. I have trail ridden once or twice, uncountable times on the property, but I want to expand my horizons. I see a constant stream of pictures on Google when I enter the word "horse" into the picture search engine; of riders seeking solitary comfort in the shores. I've always dreamed that it would be me out there on my glorious Spanish horse, but the unfortunate thing would have to be that he's very green yet, and too big for a giant leap forward in the trailing world. We could take him, if only he was obedient and maybe five hundred pounds lighter... I'm not saying that he'd never be able to go to the beach, just maybe not this year. Besides, it's getting colder anyway. The weather is kind of rough with the passing tropical storm. Today would be the perfect day because it's a high of 76, a slight breeze, with full sun. But it's Sunday, and I'm not the one hauling. We've had plenty of time on our hands every weekend, but our horses either have a show or the weather is bad.

     If we did by some strand of luck, head out to the national forest, or the beach I'd probably take the palomino pony Princess that I've been riding and showing for Kenda. This pony, I'll tell you is a superstar. She will jump, or at least attempt to jump anything you throw in front of her.

This is the stadium round at RockingHorse Equestrian Center.

      Before we put her ad up we want to take her on some trails and maybe to the beach a couple of times so we can say she's been trail-ridden. There is no doubt in my mind that she'd be fabulous on the trails because she's done some serious cross country. We've schooled it a couple of times at Longwood Farms South (my favorite pony jumping playground) and at home. She goes through water and everything. The best part of all of it is that she's only five years old. She can go up to training three on basic movements and pretty much any height for jumping. I love her to death, because a couple weeks ago we were practicing bounces and she had no earthly clue what those two        jumps so close together meant. After a couple weeks of confusion she comes right out of the paddock fresh as day and jumps every one of those bounces.

     Malachi is not so fond of her. I've kind of already established a bond of sorts with Princess pony. She comes running and talking at the fence to me, she always greets me with a nicker even    if I'm just coming back from the tack room because I forgot a whip or something. She's a super sweet thing who doesn't need to do lessons. I want to steal her ~ lalala. But really, I do love her. You just have to love the cute thing. But Malachi always comes first, he's a given. When I am riding her, he's away from the giant round bale behind a tree playing sneaky spy on Taylor the traitor with his two best buddies Sugar and Hurry. Those two are for another day...

     What I've been getting at is that I really need to step up and get out to the barn more so that way I can successfully avoid trying to choose between my horse and the horse I'm training. Sometimes you just don't have time to ride one over the other, and one of them just happens to get tossed in the round pen instead of the full process. I still have that homework to do guys. I promise that one extra day in the paddock isn't going to kill you. They still don't believe me.

     Can't you see how many problems I'm running into with this beach thing? I obviously want Malachi to be my first beach-goer over Princess because I can always look back and say he was my first ride at the beach. We could get some phenomenal pictures too. It would be more beneficial to him as well because the poor guy needs to go different places if I expect to event him next year. Princess already has all the experience she needs as far as different places go. Malface on the other hand - he needs some experience.

     We just need a day. Next weekend would probably be a rush because I have a show at Green Cove Saturday for Princess, and if we were going to go at all it would be Sunday. I can only think about the fact that I have school the very next day and how exhausted and sore I'm going to be. But by then I have no idea what the weather would be like. I fear it's going to get extremely cold the weekend after the next. This is so hard! The forecast for today is shining right on an open schedule! Maybe my words can do enough... I'll come up with something...

Awaken

This is that green horse energy I was talking about.

          Today was the first ride for Malachi and I of this week. It was a pretty decent ride, we worked on a couple of new things, finally moving up into the stages of some first level dressage movements, like leg-yielding from the trot, and we worked on some transitional departs. Aside from all of that I couldn't help but get caught in a reverie of our first days together compared to now, because I'll tell you, those first days a little more than a year ago were quite a nightmare. Those first days (or months) of us together weren't the pleasant afternoon rides that we have today.

          But anyway, today's ride went pretty well. I'm excited for his tremendous growth, and only those daydreams can give me hints about what his marvelous structure and natural dressage foundation will bring. His lateral work is very thorough and solid aside from some confusion with bending and lack of strength on my part, but today he showed minimal improvements considering the fact that I haven't ridden him technically in a week. I did have to free lunge him in the roundpen to keep from any sudden surges of green-horse energy, but after he ran off some steam, and got a good rub he was content and ready to work. I'm glad to finally wake up and ride him again. A week is way too long to stay away from my baby.