LBE's are FUN...

So general's been doing his stretches and all his new exercises, they've been going pretty well. He's so clever, his carrot stretches are so simple to him and he does it with hardly any help from me :) i'm making it into a trick, so I say left.. he stretches left, i say right, he stretches right, up, down, twist etc etc. he stretched to the left when i said it last night :) woohoo!
One of his new exercises is to lift his left legs up as high as he can. She recomended raised poles, but they are WAAAY to boring for him and after doing them once or twice he just demolishes them... lol! so I tried putting travel boots on his left legs, as last time he had them on he was hopping about and definitely raising his legs high! so i put them on.. guess what... he walked normally. no problem at all. didnt lift up high, just walked as if they weren't there. clever horse??? i'm sure i heard him laugh at me...

So at the moment I'm having to just pick his feet up and stretch them, its not ideal as he's supposed to do it for 10-15 minutes and by about 3 minutes my back aches and he's fed up. any ideas?

Haven't had much playtime as the weather has been awful... again... I need to move somewhere nicer :D I had a play on sunday morning, general was mega right brained though and leaping off the walls, i got very worn out brining my energy up but we got there in the end and he was very nice to play with. we just practiced maintaining gait on the circle, weave, figure 8 and sideways (which, may I say, was the BEST i've ever seen him do! Really straight without a fence and concentrating real hard! love him!!)

Gotta love those mischevious, playful, but so so lovely LBE's :D :D

Tonight I'm off to a parelli social meeting :) can't wait to meet loads of other like minded people and get some ideas!!!

savvy smiles x

Happy :)

We had the back specialist back early, because we thought general seemed much better and we wanted to know! so she came out today and checked him over....... MUCH BETTER!!! she said he's way better than she expected, his pelvis is fine now and his muscles are much looser, he's having a few problems on his left side though so he's got some more excersises to do. he has do do 15 minutes of raised poles a day now, so to stop him getting fed up and finding his own fun (darn those LBE's!), I'm going to have to find an interesting way of doing it. i'll probably incorperate the seven games into it as much as I can.

so i'm really pleased :) she's coming back in 3 weeks and she says i might be able to start riding him again by then :)

savvy smiles x

Sorry for neglecting you, I have lots of things to report

I know I havent been posting much over the christmas period, I've been so busy I havent had a minute!!

Firstly then. I spoke before about general bucking etc, and I was going to have him checked. well we had the back specialist out and she found out some interesting things. He appears to have a rotated pelvis, which is the reason behind his odd behaviour :( He also has terribly tight muscles which are becoming uncomfortable for him and also why he's been more tense recently. I feel terrible now!! However I know how forgiving horses are and I hope he can forgive me for misunderstanding his problem. Now I'm understanding how he feels, he is on a 'rehab' programme. He can't be ridden for at least 6 weeks (well, theres 4 weeks left now) and he has to do lots of stretches and exercises everyday to loosen him up, and the lady fiddled around with him to get his pelvis straight again, she's coming back in four weeks to check him again. Hopefully he will start to get better now. I can play with him on the ground gently and take him for walks, so thats ok :) I've found myself spending more undemanding time and friendly game with him, so maybe this will improve our relationship too :) I've been spending more time with holly too which is good. More on her later.
So I've been taking general for walks as often as I can, but being a LBE he just wants to RUN!! but he's not allowed :( I've been protecting my space and playing the seven games when i take him though, which keeps him thinking and in the end he decides its a cool idea to walk next to me.

Holly is doing really well, her games are getting good but we're still struggling on sideways, she will do a couple of steps but I dont think she understands it yet. We will keep trying!! Her spanish walk is going well, she'll do a couple of steps of it now walking with me, only if I have a good supply of treats mind you ;) I've been playing with the online patterns too, she's great at touch it, figure 8 and weave at walk, we're practicing trot but sometimes she gets a bit ahead of herself and forgets to go through the cones hehe. We have played with simple lead changes too and she is good at that! She was also brilliant at the falling leaf pattern... YEAH! I think the patterns are better suited to her than the levels! she is enjoying doing it.

So yeah! interesting few weeks. I hope everyone had a great christmas and new year, stick to those resolutions ;) I dont have many this year, just to be as good as I can be for my horses.

savvy smiles x

Snow!!

woweee!! it snowed at last thursday night, i woke up to 5 inches of the stuff in the garden, and there was even more at the stables, it came up over my wellies in some places!!! I played with General friday morning online and he was soo exhuberant, prancing around like a gazelle! he made me laugh when i was trying to yoyo him, he got down and rolled! then he stood up and carried on yoyoing xD it was as if he was saying 'just wait one sec, i just HAVE to try this!' lol! then i turned him out and woahhh did he go for it!! he had a great time bucking around!
Today i took him for a walk but the snow was so deep and he was so playful and excited that i had to turn around and come home as i couldnt keep up! i fell over once and he stood and stared as if to say 'come on, what you doing down there!!'
I played online tonight on the 22ft line (a rare occasion as i always get tangled up in the line!), and he was brilliant. He did some really nice natural lead changes, weave at trot and figure 8's. very pleased!!!
heres some pics from yesterday morning:

savvy smiles!! x

Mixed Feelings...

Ok so its been a weird week. on wednesday night i played with General, he was great online, not excitable or nervous, just attentive and playful. i played for half an hour then wanted a short ride so got on and did walk trot, sidepass, worked on shoulder in, he did great. then i made the (mistake?) of asking for canter. he went into a paddy, bucking and shaking his head, but he has done this a lot before (although not in a while) and ive passed it off as exhuberance so i pushed him on and got some nice canters. however, on my final canter, he exploded! he bronced on the spot about 4 times, did a HUUUGE buck to which i sat (yay!) but i was leaning waaay back, as soon as he landed the buck he reared vertically!! he has never done this with me on board. of course as i was leaning back, i came straight off when he reared as i had no balance :( but the weird thing was, he didnt take off bucking as he normally would if something goes wrong (he's a hit and run kinda guy!), but he stood next to me licking and chewing O.O i wasnt sure what to make of that. anyway, i wasnt hurt so i got up, took his saddle off and fixed it online. i got his mind going again, made it not about the canter, then had one canter on a circle at the end, which he was fine about. we are having his back checked this week and i havent ridden him since just in case. i'd rather rule that out first. i thought it could be his saddle too so we will have that sorted as well. ahh what a nightmare!! you know when you think you are getting somewhere then it goes kaput?!
still, no riding has given me more time to play on the ground with both my partners, so I have done lots with holly this week and got her desensitised to the tarp (before it was a big scary monster about to eat her, now its something useful to keep her dry when its raining xD, pretty much perfected our circling game at walk and trot and moved on to canter. our sideways is getting real good too! ANDDD wait for it... she offered a jump at the weekend!! this is a LBI/RBE (but more so LBI) who always HATED jumping, she hasnt stepped a foot over a jump for over a year, and on sunday, she jumped a barrell without me realising what was going on. i wasnt aiming her at it, i didnt know it was there!! she just chose to go over it! of course she promtly came to me afterwards for a treat ;) very proud of her!! i think we're almost ready to assess our level 1 now! yayy!! at last!!

savvy smiles x

Taking the time and its paying off :)

Ok so wednesday afternoon was brilliant, I played online and finesse with general and he did so well, I got a couple of obstacles out for him to play with (cones and ball), he did brillaintly at figue-8, weave in both walk and trot so i decided to experiement a little, and tried to yoyo a weave between the 4 cones... it worked!! he did it perfectly first time :D i was sooo proud of him, he was really listening to me and enjoying himself. yahooo :)
I played with holly that night too even though it was getting dark, but she was really good and also had full attention on me, must be something in the air that night telling them to look interested! we got some more sideways (she really struggles with that), and also some work on her bow. she will go most of the way down but just as her knee hits the floor she's like oh! and gets up quickly lol xD but many many treats and cuddles later she started to get it lol.

This weekend has been brilliant, I played with general online/freestyle with some pushing passenger too on saturday morning, the weather was fab and so was he! i had my ipod on and listened to music while playing and found it really helpful, it kept me nice and calm and he was much more attentive than usual with no spooks or going into his own little world. I had a really nice ride on him and we popped a couple of jumps too which we havent done in a while because the ground has been rubbish, he enjoyed that even though he knocked the smallest one down over and over.. he's so lazy sometimes! when i was online he was pushing the ball around and it bounced off the fence into him and shocked himself, so he reared right up vertically (like you see in films lol!) it was gorgeous!! lol. shame i didnt have my camera as he doesnt do that often (guess thats probably a good thing?!)

Sunday I played again and he was brilliant :) had a ride bareback and got my trot better, did some dressage moves (leg yield, shoulder in) and he's actually better doing it without a saddle?! lol. then i put the savvy string round his neck and did some riding with the carrot stick and he did pretty good :) he still has some trouble going to the left with the stick guiding him but we're getting there :)

Spent some undemanding time with them both last night by taking them out hand grazing into the spare field which has crazily long grass, they stand all day looking at it longingly so i decided to treat them lol. Only problem was getting them back to their field afterwards...

Hoping to have tomorrow morning off school so might get a session in :) then i finish next thursday for 2 weeks so expect lots of updates :)

savvy smiles x

Joey and Magic

This weekend the weather finally let me get some time to spend with the horses! I played online with general saturday morning then hopped on for a quick freestyle session, he was pretty good but his lack of recent riding caused him to be a little spooky of the hedge with the 'troll' in it (or so he thinks). after a while he was alright :) On sunday i took him in the school for a ride, played online again first then got on for freestyle, he was being all silly because the yard was busy and he wanted to look at everything, i kept telling myself pat's advice... 'never knock the curiosity out of a young horse', so I sat as a passenger for half an hour while he gawped at everyone and neighed and stared xD. We got some nice work once he had established that nobody was taking any notice of his whines haha.

Sunday, I played with Magic the little welsh mountion pony, she's coming on so nicely, and for a 21 year old she has so much energy!! she can outrun me by miles haha. Played online seven games and did a lottle more practice on her bowing. she loves doing tricks!! i'm going to send in my level 1 application soon for her. wish us luck!.
In the afternoon i played with Joey the mahoosive freisan. Joey was a driving horse until last year, he's 14 and only been backed to ride for 7 months. He's spooky and very very right brained, but on sunday he started to show some left brained signs. he's so willing to please, he's just so frightened. He tends to run into a blind panic.. having a 17.3hh freisan stallion speeding towards you is er... scary? haha. he's lovely though and i think he's going to do very very well. I've given his owner some homework for him, just to play LOADS of friendly game and defending her space, she's new to parelli and very keen! I also advised her to buy the level 1/2 dvds.

Didnt get much done with holly as mum was riding her quite a lot, so thats still good! holly's getting much easier to hack out, she used to refuse to go in front (not fear, just I DONT WANT TO), now she will go most of the way in front of the ride :D loving the effects parelli is having on her!!!

i have the afternoon off school tomorrow so might get a couple of hours in. hopefully!

savvy smiles x