Ride 88 - The whole herd was feeling their oats!

OMG!  Chrome was acting so mellow in the pasture I honestly thought this would be a piece of cake, relaxing ride..... yeah right!  He was such a turd.  First of all, here are the ride stats (I LOVE Endomondo!).

Liz do you put yours on running?

The first 1.91 miles was on the road and the rest was in the pasture.  The part on the road took approximately thirty minutes.  Google Earth said we only went 1.54 so it's been off this whole time because it is straight lines where Endomondo tracks all of our weaving and stuff.  The difference is .37 of a mile, so it's not much, but it will be nice to have accurate information for 2015.  We went back to the gravel road hill, intending to go all the way to the end (it's a dead end), but when we got to the top of the hill there was fresh gravel really thick and no ditch to ride in, so we turned around and went back down.  At the bottom of the hill hubby asked what I wanted to do next and I was so frustrated I said I just wanted to go home.

He started out fine, even on the road while the neighbor horses galloped up to us.  Then they started following and then they took off running.  That's when he just about lost it.  He was prancing around, trying to trot, gawking, etc., but amazingly he didn't try to bolt or anything.  It's so hard to get his attention back on me in the halter though.  I did some lateral flexion (one rein stop) until he stopped trying to trot and prance and jig.

Then as soon as we got to the end of their pasture he started balking again, as usual.  I kicked the snot out of him and we continued on our way.  Then we got to the same place where he spooked a long time ago while I was riding bareback and I caught it on video (post here).  He spooked today and almost spun all the way around back toward home.  I straightened him out and booted him along and he spooked again (not as big).  I could hear stuff moving so I think it was deer again.  He was eyeballing it after that... then a school bus was coming up behind us... I got him off in someone's yard and turned him to face the bus.  At this point I wanted to get OFF!  I haven't felt like that in a long time.  However I stayed on and he was totally fine with the bus.  So we continued on the way and he wanted to trot, dodge into the field and act spooky about trash cans...  in other words he was just full of it!!  There was also a LOT of traffic.  Wrong time of day to ride on the road.

We went to the gravel hill and started trotting up, then a car turned on the road of course, so I stopped him and let them pass.  Then I continued up.  Hubby biked almost all the way to the top.  I was amazed!  There is no way I could have done that.  At the top we saw the gravel, went back down and I decided to go back home.  There was a ton of traffic and he was still gawking and being stupid.  Every horse we passed had to neigh at us too.  Not sure what that was about.  He was a turd until we got to within sight of home and then he dropped his head and chilled out.  I was seething.  That's why I decided to work his butt in our arena when I got home.  If he was going to make me work that hard on the road I was going to make him work hard at home.

He was being barn sour in the arena, but a few flexions and the use of a stick as a riding crop got him over the balking and trying to turn around. Then he was totally fine of course, but my stupid jeans were riding up and I couldn't trot more than a few steps before I had to fix them.  I have to remember to wear breeches next time even if I think I'm only going to be walking out on the road.  I did canter him from the driveway to the pasture and again from the back pasture to the gate and he was perfect.  He has such an amazing canter.

The funny thing is while we were working in the arena Zep was feeling his oats and goofing off and being adorable.  I gave up on doing anything productive and started taking pictures of Zep while hubby took video.

 Pawing the ground.

 Laying down.

 Rolling.

 Saying hi to Chrome and squealing at him trying to get him to play.

 He was full of it.

 Big bad Led Zeppelin!

He wasn't even doing that to anyone, just playing all by himself!

 I started herding him.

 Wish this wasn't blurry. Some weird running and kicking move.

 So handsome!

Zep chased the dogs and goats too.  He followed us around. He tried to destroy my arena marker buckets.  He was just full of himself!  Here's the video.  I tried to cut out as much of the boring stuff as possible while leaving Zep's antics in it.  Enjoy!

The good news is Chrome has stopped expecting to be fed as soon as I untack him.  He just stands there asking me to scratch his head and then goes to his hay bale, ignoring his feed bucket.  Score!

So it wasn't a bad ride, just frustrating, but that's life with a green horse.  I'm just not used to all of this energy because I never used to ride in the cold weather.  Oh and he's gotten a THICK winter coat finally.  I don't think I've ever seen his coat that thick.  :)

Ride 85 - I have an arena!! Pictures and video!

I finally have an arena!!  Okay it's just rock filled buckets out in my pasture, but still it's really exciting.  We measured out a 20x40 meter arena (getting it square is a pain!) and we used five gallon buckets full of rocks to mark the corners and midway points down the long side.

The buckets were the only thing I could think of that would withstand the shenanigans of Chrome and Zep.  They destroy anything left in the pasture.  We will see how long this lasts.  I hope if they do knock one over that they don't move it too far.  It really was a pain to measure this thing out.  Eventually we're going to use cinder blocks and poles to build the corners, but our cinder blocks are being used for something else right now so it will do.

Chrome did fantastic for our first workout in the arena!  I only rode thirty minutes because he did such a good job.  He did step "outside" the arena a few times and he obviously is still learning about corners and circles, but I'm really impressed with the progress we made.  The weird thing is that being in an "arena" brought all of my lessons back to my mind.  I sat up, looked up (when I remembered) and used my head and shoulders to lead him where I wanted to go.  He was following my body cues way better than I ever realized he did.  Now he just needs to learn to follow the legs too.  There were points where he had a decent tempo and I was actually able to think about my own position (look up, shoulders back, hands up and together, elbows bent and legs... well they are hopeless).  I realized watching the video that I'm either gripping with my knee or posting off my stirrups and that's on reason my leg is swinging so bad.  I think once his tempo improves and my strength improves that it will get better.  :)

Here is the video.  It's kind of long and probably boring, but I really enjoyed watching it.  I wish my riding were better, but it will improve now that we have a way to practice.


Hubby even pointed out that Chrome has a relaxed, swishy tail most of the time.  He only flicked it around a couple of times.  I did notice that the halter slides over into his eye though!  Oops!  I can't wait for my new bit to get here next week.  I think the halter in the eye and the wind blowing is why he had his ears back so much.  That wind was insane!!  It finally knocked the cell phone over, but I only rode for about three more minutes and then called it quits because he was such a good boy.  He was sweaty too.  Can you believe it's almost December and I'm riding in a tank top??  Gotta love our bipolar weather.  Actually I do love it when it's like this, but I'm not ready for it to go back to being cold again.

After I first mounted up, on the way to the back pasture Chrome was being VERY balky, so hubby got me a stick to use as a riding crop.  When he reached out to give it to me, Chrome took it instead.

I took his word for it and let him drop it on the ground.  I didn't need it for the ride, so Chrome was right.  Such a good boy.

See his cute little relaxed tail flip?

Here are some riding pictures my hubby took (he set up his cell phone for the video and used my point and shoot camera for pictures, he's awesome!) for those of you who don't want to watch the video since watching other people ride can be boring.  :)

 You can kind of see the slope of the land in these two pictures. 

Still can't trot a straight line hehe.

I changed a lot to black and white because it was a bad time of day for pictures.

I'm so excited about my arena.  I think we are going to make a lot of progress as long as it stays dry.  It gets really slick back there so come January we might be back on the roads again until summer.  :)

Here are some more pictures from the day.

 I normally hate selfies, but this was too cute not to share.

 So handsome!

 Also handsome.. and blendy!

 Messed around with some photo editing... kind of weird but cool.

 My whole herd!

 Chrome playing with the neighbor cow.

 Zep was braying in this picture.  Wish I'd had a video!!

 LOVE this face!!!!

 Some goating... er horsing around.  :)

 I love spending gorgeous days out with my herd and my Jackal pup.  :D

P.S.  I almost forgot.  Here is a video of me trotting Chrome (he felt like he was short striding, but he wasn't) and we accidentally cantered.  It was the best canter ever and our first canter out in the back of the pasture ever.  Good boy!!