Laurie – You have it MADE!
A really cute horse, a free groom AND a free photographer!!!
Damn, girl – you must live right!
BTW – Did we order the first picture in a 18" x 24" for over the sofa, or are we showing incredible restraint and going for the smaller 11" x 17" for the end table next to the sofa? 
Sorry to hear about the ringbone! 
At least he has a mommy like you! Sam sounds like a winner though! Gotta love the sane horses! 
In other news, I might be buying Tot. It’s a long story and were still in the process of working it out, but yeah. It’s a strong possibility. I’m off to ride her pretty soon. Rode her yesterday, too. Jumped her over this little crosspole line and GASP! I actually stayed with her jump! 
My mom keeps asking me how I plan on staying with her over 3’. Lots and lots of no stirrup work in my future. Haha…excellent.
.:Erin B #2:.
You cannot stop us, you cannot bring us down,
Never give up, we go on and on.
Hey, wty, I ain’t worried. Barbie is too dumb to figure out how to use the keyboard. Now Hammie… he’s already building his new computer set-up he ordered over the Internet. Tigger lent him Beezer’s credit card.
“Friends don’t let friends eat fish tacos.”
First - I wore my RUST breeches today at The Barracks!
Gramento was great! I missed his o/f classes in his first division, but he got 4th’s in both classes. The other horses with our barn were fabulous too! I got 4th in the hack as well. The second division was chock full of all the conformation, green, a/o, working, etc. horses (can you say Wallstreet Week with Olin? ), and he had a rub in one class and a swap in the other, so no ribbons over fences. We were 5th in the hack out of nice horses with pros on them.
Then, we went outside for some pictures. Poor Gramento had been telling me that he was tired in the hack - i.e. lots of leg to bring his head to normal position…Well, when outside, with fields of horses in view, etc., up came the head (a la giraffe), pound went the heart - ready to EXPLODE!!!
I’ll try to finish the roll of traditional film when my daughter shows on Sunday and will hopefully post our probably extremely unflattering pictures, but proof that I have sat on him and worn rust, next week! 
I actually think it’s pretty funny. She’s never done it in the show ring though, where I’m sure I’d find it less amusing. 
Tess groans when we’re having flatwork lessons (she would SO much rather jump). Eventually all that suppling and bending, collecting and lenghtening makes her start wallowing in self-pity and she’ll groan loudly for two or three strides.
Sorry Pam, but I can’t offer any solutions. Mostly I just laugh.
Bertie, I LOVE your horse. Also, love that barn. What gorgeous stone work. Where is it?
Chef, re: mounting: Since I get babies off the track that have never been mounted from the ground (they have always had legs up as they walk around), and I live alone, my solution is the 3 step, step ladder. The wooden kind, not aluminum, so if they get caught in it, they will not slice themselves…
We go to a corner of the ring and I place the baby diagonally across the corner so it is hard for him (but not impossible, so he doesn’t feel trapped) to go forward or back. I then put my step ladder down near him. If he moves away, I move the ladder. Sometimes the ladder gets moved 10 - 12 times before I even get close to leaning over his back. But, no matter, I just keep on talking to him and moving the ladder – proving to him that he cannot escape it by swinging away.
Do NOT attempt to put your foot in the stirrup at this stage – you can get severely injured if he freaks and bolts! Once you are able to lean over his back, pat him all up and down and make a huge fuss and then back off and start again. And yet again.
Only when he stands still and relaxed for the ladder being put in place and you climbing up the ladder and standing over him should you attempt to put weight in the stirrup. But even now, keep 2/3rds of your weight on the top of the ladder and be prepared to abort mounting if he does not stay relaxed.
Time taken now will pay off down the road. You need to change his bad mounting habits NOW or you will have a monster of a problem to deal with for the rest of his riding life.
Don’t even try to mount him from a fixed mounting block or fence without help. You absolutely cannot win and every time you try and lose, you are reinforcing his “Neener, neener, I don’t have to do that if I don’t want to, and you can’t make me” attitude…
<BLOCKQUOTE class=“ip-ubbcode-quote”><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR> I have to beg him for every step atleast half the time, because he has absolutely no willingness to go forward. Any tips on how to work on that? or will it just come after a while? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
If it were me, I would work on “forward” from the ground first. Get a really good response to the “cluck” or to “walk on” (reinforced by the (dressage) whip form the ground. Then use the voice command along with your leg at first- gradally switching to just leg. It seems he does not yet KNOW what the leg means.
I sounds as if the other horse could use some remedial training in “forward” too.
Well then LaurieB - we expect to see you in the A/As in 2002!!!
Congrats!!
Beezer? Does Merry have a son of the legendary Khemosabi+++??? All flash and fiery eyes, with the tail rucked up over the back??? And in the hack class no less…
Oh Beezer thank you very much!!
Oh I’ll be wearing my helmet all right… I don’t even bother to ride or show for that matter in anything but my certified Troxel… it look okay, and it is a must in my opinion when working with greenies!!! I learned the hard way… luckily without serious injure… just a could head thumping when my uncertifed came flying off after we over jumped a fence…it was 2ft9in… he cleared the 6ft wings!!! that was of course after coming across the diagonal 5 stride in 4!!! and being on top of the the 2nd fence!!! Ahhh greenies!!! Apparently it was quite spectaular!!! Glad he stopped doing that!
Sorry to hear about your fall. I fell off 6 times the summer before last, and it was not fun. Not even a baby greenie, just a chronic stopper. Luckily, I have never had a concussion and don’t ever want one!
Just thought i’d tell you that I have a skunk, absolutely love it, and wear it in the hunters. Most of the juniors in Ontario have skunks and wear them in the hunters. I had a Troxel Gold as well and the skunk is a thousand times better. It really doesn’t look big once it’s on, and it’s super comfy!
I hope you feel better soon. I (among others, I presume) will be thinking of you!
~I am an angel on a field trip from heaven ~
So is Barbie the future A/O, A/A or A/A Jumper for Beezer?
Or is she alas, for sale?
i can post. hehe.
riding a 6 coming 7 yr old sometimes made sometimes a green bean paint gelding, “Lucky”.
he has lived in the same barn for almost 4 years, and he still tries for the spooky horse eating corner, and tries to say the windows have monsters in them.
set a few jumps up, and hes all business. no funny stuff.
silly ponies.
Good going, dcm! Are you sure Rio wasn’t “sniffing” your daughter’s foot in the stirrup? Or maybe the girth smelled like “Eu de Pony”?
“Charter Member of the Baby Greenie Support Group of North America”
TRA: I ain’t no professional, but I would suggest just starting your horse all over again, from longeing in side reins to long-lining and maybe even hanging out in a western saddle. Trust me, I’ve been there/done that with an older horse that’s had some training and then an extended lay-up. It’s as if they’ve had time to think about stuff and frankly, they’d rather NOT be a show horse! So you just have to play refresher course all over. Give him 60 days of kindergarten again. Your trainer would probably shoot me, but that’s what I would do.But then again, I’m not a trainer…
I told my girlfriend about the “I see dead people comment” and we were both in hysterics! That is so classic.
Yesterday I had the absolute WORST ride ever on Hammie. He just would NOT focus on me! Gee, could it be that I’ve only ridden him twice in 9 days? Round 2 is this morning. Pray for me.
“Friends don’t let friends eat fish tacos.”
Yeah, but those were little jumps, and not at a show, where he displays a bit more joie de vivre.
“Charter Member of the Baby Greenie Support Group of North America”
Well it seems that the wonkies have made it down to Houston. I went to ride my normally lazy pretty unflappable greenie Count today and he was anything but unflappale. It all starts as we are lungeing. He is running around like a psycho. Then the people across the street decide to fire up the chainsaw and cut down a tree. When that thing hit the ground Count who is finally starting to canter instead of run like a looney stops turns towards me and runs straight at me like I am going to save him. I jumped out of the way just as he flys by and he rips the lungeline out of my hand and take off for safer ground. Well I have to walk all the way across the pasture to get him and have to start the whole lunging thing again. Once he finally looks decent enough that I would consider getting on him the big Hell’s Angels Brigade goes by our house. I thought I was gonna die there must have been about a 100 of these guys and I swear they were revving their engines as they went by. Finally I get him to calm down and we trotted around the field for about 30 min. Their was no way I was goung to try to canter. I’ll save that for tomarrow.
Mikey (and I) had a “big boy” lesson last week with a REAL trainer and he was quite good. But it really showed up the holes in his training (i.e. flatwork ) His mom grew up in the era of “Virginia broke” horses and she still thinks that a horse going around with nose pointed out on a loopy rein is a lovely sight.
Well, nowadays, horses are supposed to go on the bit, I guess. And last week’s lesson made it painfully clear that Mikey’s mom had not been doing right by her boy in teaching him his tricks. So, poor Mikey is now in torture school. All the rules have changed on him and he is pissed. Until last Friday he has been hacking around beautifully. Knows his leads. Does perfect flying changes. Canters 3’ jumps. Shouldn’t that be enough??? He thinks so.
For the last 4 days, poor Mikester’s brain has been pretzeled (sp?). He is getting the “go forward” signal and the “whoa” signal at the same time. “NOT FAIR!” says he! “Sorry” says I, but thats the way its gonna be.
Well, after 4 days of admiring his blaze upside down, through his ears, I sigh, get off and go get out the draw reins.
Now I am a sympathetic rider. I am light with the draw reins, ready to ease off them the millisecond I get a response, so I do not mind using them in situations like this. In fact, that is why God invented draw reins, right?
So we go out and at the walk, its great, I have control of his head, and I get him round, soft and reaching for the bit. In fact I am off the draw reins and back to using the snaffle rein in a matter of 60 seconds. So, all systems so, we progress to the trot. Or we try to. That is when we demonstrate the Levade. A difficult movement, but Mikey performs it beautifully.
Impressed that he has mastered the Levade so quickly, I am interested to see what else he can do (like trot?) but instead we move on to the Piaffe. Now I am thinking that these DQ’s are a bunch of hooey. (Like I didn’t know this all along. 
) 4th Level HA! Mikey can do all these fancy schmancy movements on day one of his training without all those 10 meter circles and dressage whips and long spurs. And he even has the requisite pinned ears and swishing tail!
Well, long story short, the Mikester ended today by trotting around on light contact, nose slightly in front of the vertical, jaw soft, poll bent, reaching for the bit, ears pricked, swelled up to about 17 hands with pride because I was telling him over and over again what a WONDERFUL horsie he is, and he knew it. It was really a great feeling to come up against a brick wall and hit it and come out the other side unscathed with a really positive feeling. THIS is why I love the greenies!
what if you tried pytting her in the arean for a week and make her get used to it that might work.
I think I am technically in Menlo Park… Rancho Viejo. Right next to the Training Center. My baby and I are recent (8 months ago) transplants from the East Coast. Which barn are you at?
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