Trails, Pony Rides, and Show Prep

So since my last post horse-wise I went on a short trail ride on Friday. We just did walk-trot because one of the girl's took a horse that has never been out before and except for a few crow hops he was pretty good. Satin was not that happy about missing out on cantering / galloping so I took her for a short canter around the paddocks when we got back. Then Saturday we did some schooling in the ring because we have a horse show coming up on Sunday! She was a good girl except for being a bit speedy on her flying lead changes, but that is how she always is with her changes. There is something about flying changes that is apparantly extremely exciting, at least in Satin's world. After our schooling we went on a short walking trail to cool out with another girl who just had her horse at our farm for a month and was leaving the next day, but she used to board there a couple years ago and for most of her childhood so she knows our trails very well. She showed me this one path that used to be her favorite galloping path so I said, "Well let's go". I told her we had to send her off with bang, so why not? Plus makes up for our missed gallop on the trails the day before. So we had a nice little run which both Satin and I enjoyed very much.

On Sunday we had a short schooling session because I promised my barn owner I would go down about an hour south and help her give pony rides for the girl scouts. The pony rides went well, except they had us doing them in this unmowed field of very tall grass, so it was TICK CITY! I am not even kidding, it was horrible. I pulled at least 10 ticks off me throughout the day and one of the other girls that went with us pulled off like 15. My barn owner thinks we must have hit a nest because we had a lot of baby ones on us, as well as, the big ones. They even got into the truck which was parked in the field under some trees with the windows down. We sprayed just about the entire can of Deep Woods Off and half a can of horse fly spray all over ourselves several times and it still did nothing, though neither of the horses got any ticks on them, so go figure.

Anyway, today Satin and I had another schooling session. She was pretty good for the most part. Her lope was a bit quick, but got better in the end. Her jog was good, though she tried to speed up when I went to one hand. Her quarter turns were great. She is so smart, though I already knew that of course (Lol :) ). She now has the quarter turn idea down pat and is ready to do the next one before I even ask at all. Her spins were good as well, though she is beginning to anticipate too much between the quarter turns and spins. She tried to canter in her quarter turns and spin right the second I halt her to ask for the spin. Her sidepass was great and we even worked on some bridleless riding (a big interest of mine). We have done some bridleless in the past walk, jog, and lope and even bareback once. The girls at the farm and I started a little horse rescue and we are planning an open house to raise money in which we will have all kinds of demos and things (I will write more about this in another post later on). I am planning on a bridleless demo so I want to get Satin really good at it by then. We did some sidepassing and backing bridleless and she was good about it. Later on I rode Hezzie who is a Kentucky Mountain Walking Horse. We just played around for fun becuase some of the other girls came out to ride and he was a good boy as usual.

In other news I got the online paid internship I wanted! I am pretty excited about it. It is for a trail riding magazine looking to launch this huge website. I will be doing online research and data entry for a 4 week project for which I will paid at the end of the 4 weeks and if they like my work I will do another 4 week project. Its perfect for me. Its flexible because I do everything online from home, it pays, its great experience, and its horse related. What could be better?

On Saturday I had the opportunity to catch up with high school friends home from college and I am in the process of booking my trip to Vegas to see my aunts. It will be a busy week with my brother's graduation and a horse show coming up, but looking forward to it!