Wizard Session 76; JR Session 31: Little Lambs Eat Ivy

Thursday, 4/16/09

Before I went to the barn, my mom and I met a flock of spring lambs and watched a wonderful Border Collie named Riot do some herding.

Quicksilver Q-Eye-It Riot, HXAs, TD, RN, FDCh-Gold (aka “Riot”)

This ewe was watching an airplane

The weather was warm and sunny. I worked both horses in the dressage court, which is on the edge of the woods and past the paddocks. Wizard and JR are both quite good about working by themselves but they do get a little bit of that wonderful magnetic pull toward the barn when they are in high spirits. I longed JR first, tacked up in a bridle and surcingle. I warmed him up at the walk and trot before putting the side reins on him- they were on the loosest hole and barely even made contact. When they are attached to the saddle, they are a tad shorter but they are pretty long when they are attached to the surcingle. JR worked about 10 minutes in the side reins. I then attached one side rein to the bottom ring of the surcingle and attached the clip to a tied piece of baling twine under JR’s chin, hooked to the bit. The single side rein encourages different muscles from the traditional side reins and I like it as a cooldown exercise since it asks the horse to travel more long and low and allows him to reach his nose out more than side reins. When JR’s longeing session was over (a litle less than 30 minutes, including warmup and cooldown), I took him for a hand walk on the trails. My mom came with us. JR was fantastic! He’s a little reactive to sounds and sights, but he did not spook a single time. We worked on a little hill that is used for dirtbikes, climbing up and down it a few times. I took him back to the barn and gave him a good grooming- he’s still shedding.

Wizard got an almost identical workout, warmup with no side reins, worked 10 minutes with them on, and a little work with the single rein set on the bottom ring. He was very responsive and seemed pretty comfortable in both directions. He rushed less to the right than he did last time we longed. He did get pretty excited when he saw Mary the Morgan come out to graze, but we worked through it. We then took a walk in hand on the trails with Mary the Morgan. Wizard was fantastic! He has a really big and fast walk, but I was able to rate it when needed. He did not speed up at all on the way back to the barn.

After both horses were cooled out and back in their stalls, I met with Danielle. She s a high school student who is interested in equine photography. I showed her how I do my basic liberty photos, using Mary the Morgan and Cee Cee the Quarter Horse as our models. Then I showed her how to get the most flattering angles for portrait work, and we practiced some doorway portraits.

Up until that point, Danielle was using her own camera (a Nikon- yay!). Then she used my camera :^) She did a good job! Check out her portrait of JR:

Portrait of JR, by Danielle