We're BACK!

I was recently informed that I should have better kept up with this blog.

Unfortunately, this year flew by, and I got very busy with CCWHA and showing and getting a 3rd horse, and work and the blog just got put to the side.

So, now hopefully, we'll be posting more updates on my little girl. She's doing great by the way!

This past year Tari was getting adjusted to going to CCWHA shows and we did well in Egg & Spoon. That's my favorite class, and we actually won a few times! I would enter her in some classes at the shows, and we got enough points in each class to get a trophy for each. I was very impressed with her! We also won reserve high point in the Adult gaming division. She made her momma proud for our first year together!

Over the year she's done well in the barrel & Pole classes. I think she's gonna be the only one of my 3 that is better at barrels than poles. But, we shall see. She still has time to improve.

All year she has been trying her hardest, and I think she really does enjoy her job. She is extremely smart and picks up new things quickly. I'm also really glad she has yet to become "marish". She definitely has her moments, but she still acts a bit like a baby. She loves to snuggle with me. She does act slightly like a child though. She'll hold a grudge in a heartbeat and she will let you know when you've hurt her feelings! I do love her though!

Ok...anyway...So her biggest issue with barrels this year has been turning. GO figure! She doesn't keep her butt under her coming out of the turn. She swaps leads in the back and counter canters to the next barrel. Besides being uncomfortable for me to ride, it causes her turns to be less tight, and essentially time consuming. SOO.... yesterday we did some exercises to get her working on her back end to strengthen it up and teach her to automatically stay on her back end in her turns.

First we did some work on the fence. I would turn her into the fence and ask her to do a 180 in the other direction. We'd go a few steps and turn into the fence in the other direction. She picked up quickly how to turn quickly, but she wasn't quite turning completely on her back end. She'd finish the turn on her front end, somehow. So then we just went to walking counter-arc circles. We'd walk in a circle with her nose tipped slightly to the outside to help push her hip to the inside to keep her back inside hind reaching forward. This worked well, for a little while, but I could tell she was getting frustrated. However, I knew as smart as she was, she got the idea of the exercises. So, I decided to just ask her to turn and we'd turn until she turned on her backend. If she would do that, I'd let her walk out of the turn. She liked this exercise, and I was right. She did this the best. After only a few minutes of wandering and randomly asking for a change of direction with my legs, she was sitting and turning. I wanted to make a correlation between turning randomly in the arena to turning around the barrel, so we walked the pattern once and I asked for her to turn, just like I had while we were wandering. She turned beautifully, so I let it go at that.

She gets the day off today, so we'll see if she remembers it on Wednesday.