...in offering unto y'all far, far too many pictures of me and my ponykins :) i got a new camera, and i had somebody there to take pictures, so guess what we did?
they are at: http://www.andor.org/stjarni-207/ some notes: . the footing sucks -- it's an inch of snow over an inch of semi-solid broken-up icy snow over six inches of snow, partly crushed down by stjarni (i am the only person in the barn, besides my trail-buddy paul, currently actually riding their horse). . my sometimes-extreme chair seat at the soft gaits isn't an attempt to be icelandic; i'm trying to get stjarni to slow down and lift his front end, as his default speed at *any* gait is FAST. we have already learned to rate the walk to slow, medium, and fast using more subtle body aids, and for some reason he's very responsive to this already at the canter, but he wants to gait FAST all the time and i want him to be willing and able to vary his speed. i realize i look kinda ridiculous; feel free to offer suggestions for other ways of working with this (the posture thing was my instructor's suggestion). also feel free to play the "what gait?" game -- on board i call it all "tolt" and aim for the rhythm of "love-and-kisses love-and-kisses", but i don't always get it, esp. on this kind of nasty footing. . the other person with a beard is my wonderful friend chris, a 250# man with a very small amount of experience with horses and (i think) a truly lovely natural balance. he looks far less ridiculous on stjarni than i do, imho :) he also took all of the pictures with me in them :) . the other person without a beard is my indescribably dear trail-buddy paul, riding his lease-horse cheyenne. after all these pictures got taken (actually two days, one just me and chris, me and chris and paul the second day) paul and i had a lovely trail ride in the state forest, where i generally ride on the buckle (stjarni likes to put his head down a lot, possibly to see the footing?) and we got to canter along the fire roads -- for some reason not a lot of people have been enjoying the winter weather in the forest, and the ground is unbroken except for a couple of bike tracks, so the accumulated snow makes for excellent footing for stjarni. cheyenne is not always so sure but they have learned to trust one another's judgement sometimes :) . i take an unreasonable pride in cheyenne's bit (a rubber d-ring snaffle). when i started riding at this barn he was in a ported western bit with a cricket because "it came with the bridle"; i persuaded paul to try first a non-ported shanked bit that i happened to have, and the d-ring is my childhood pony's old bit. that day was our first trail ride with cheyenne in that bit, and not only has our ring-work on "whoa" and "stand still quietly" and "downward transitions are easy" appeared to work, he went better than ever in the softer bit, with no head-tossing on downward transitions or halts, a more pleasant expression, and an easier time standing around waiting while stjarni and i bushwhacked or whatever. so all of you who talk about the value of training a horse to respond to softer and softer cues with less and less hardware, know that i'm listening and bullying other people into giving it a try too ;) . y'all are welcome, indeed invited, to offer whatever comments or criticisms you like, and i will accept them in the spirit intended ;) . some of the pictures are HUGE, and i recommend using a resizing browser such as firefox to make it comfortable to view. (the new camera can take much bigger pictures than the old one, and i have left some of the pix almost original sizes b/c i plan to try printing some out.) cheers, --vicka and the powershot sd700is
