World's Best Brumby

Since my brumby loves to eat so much, you'd think she'd be in the thick of this nibblefest. But no, there she is all by herself in the corner, on top of an old snow heap! Although she looks kind of sad and lonely in this picture, I know that she feels quite happy living in her herd...even if this picture makes her look like a herd of one.

 Thursday may have been the first day of spring, but it also happened to be Lilly's birthday!! Happy Birthday, Brumby! Although I was at work all day, Bill got the party started by putting this pink bow on her! I do think I see those lips curling in a little smile. 

With the trail not an option, it looks like I will be in the ring for a while. This means I have zeroed in on RDF-TV and all the training shows they feature there. This is a shot from one of Julie Goodnight's episodes. It is probably totally illegal to even put it on my blog. Uh oh. In any case, she was talking about getting your horse to move in a given direction, and how you have to close all the doors except the one that you want the horse to take. I happen to like Julie Goodnight a lot. I think this graphic is simple and helpful.

And then, over on Clinton Anderson's show, he was demonstrating lateral and vertical flexion and using this patch of trees to help him try it out on a thoroughbred he was training. It was really strange to see Clinton riding such a tall and skinny horse! He was carefully bending this horse around the trees and circling him around and around. I wanted to try it with Lilly in the ring, using cones.

So today I zoomed over to Bill's and scanned the pasture for the birthday girl. The day wasn't that warm, but it was so pretty and placid that I called Christine from the pasture to lure her over. No luck: her back was killing her.

In the barn, my brumby tried to asphyxiate me with her shedding hair.

Down in the ring, I set up a bunch of cones fairly close to each other in no particular pattern. They were supposed to be the trees  from Clinton's show. I forgot to take a photo of them, but the scene is easy to imagine. All I can say is that my brumby did not have the racehorse mentality of Clinton's thoroughbred. She was as slow as molasses in January. While I was in the ring, Bill came down and spent some time with Glitter, including taking a short ride--- which went swimmingly. (Very nice, Glitter!!!) Then the wind became LOUD AND WILD and I had to get out of there.

Looks like spring is getting off to an excellent start! If only the snow would melt and the mud would go away so we can get down to the real business of riding.


Soon!