Wednesday, August 15, 2018


I haven't been able to ride in a week due to weather and adulting. I have been extremely frustrated about that. So today when the rain storm showed up at 1:00pm, I was pretty bumbed. Then the rain passed and the sun came out! OH GOODIE! 

Some back story today, besides the rain, Finn has been harassed by cattle drinking her water all day. She's also been pretty amped up and excitable. 

About 4:00pm (I don't know why I'm listing the times as if they are important). I go out to the barn, I notice a cow tipping Finn's water bucket over, it obviously was empty. So my mother in law filled the bucket while I went into the barn. I got Finn all saddled up, but I don't have a round pen, I would have defiantly round penned her today.

So I half ass longe Finn, we both kind of suck at longing... Everything seemed okay, but with all the factors I thought something might happen. So I mount up and I start flexing Finn's head around and I notice things aren't quite right. In fact they are quite wrong, Finn is pinning her ears back and crow hopping! Luckily I was attempting to flex her head, so I already had her head turned as she was trying to hop. At the same time I was kicking her, to make her move forward. 

In my adult brain, I'm thinking, "this horse is gonna throw me." The kid me, "just kept her head turned and hang on!" Fortunately I managed to stay on and stop the rodeo.

But wait there's more! So I told the Waffle where I was going and headed off down the road toward the neighbor that has dogs. Finn doesn't like dogs much, and when I saw that he was on his excavator and there were two little dogs running around, I did turn around. Then I thought, "well, I suppose today is as good as any to get pitched off, Finn needs to see the excavator!" So I turned back and yelled at the dogs to, "git!" The fortunately listened to me and I began riding toward the excavator, Finn looked at it but didn't seem to mind it. We got all the way passed it and she was only concerned when it was behind her, and she wasn't very concerned at that.

More back story here, when we were at the stable in the valley there was a rock quarry nearby and they had huge earth movers and excavators running at all hours. Finn was so fearful of those machines that it was really challenging to take her out on the trail. In fact it was down right nerve wracking because she was SO spooky. I did a lot of ground work with her when her allergies got bad, and that really seems to have helped.

Finn was more concerned about the other neighbors sheds than she was about the excavator!
On the way home she did do her patented "jump stop" spook. It's weird it's like she jumps and puts her legs out wide, like a dog when they are wanting to play. At leas that is what it feels like she does. So I made her do circles to get her head back in the game.

After that she was fine and we finished out a nice ride, can't wait to do it again tomorrow.


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