When Kasane and I do serpentines free-lunging, I usually only have my carrot stick (4′ stick used for cues with a six foot lash). You are right in that most of the cues she is working from are body language and voice commands (walk, trot, reverse, etc.). You know how you can feel when your…
I took the little Acer Aspire One D150 to gaming on Saturday night. I had spent hours on Friday night trying to figure out what was wrong with the computer and concluded that it wasn’t able to charge any more from the power cord. So. Several of the guys at the gaming group are sys…
My little Acer Aspire One D150 has officially died. Can’t get it to boot and not sure what’s wrong with it. It’s dead dead dead. I’ll have to pull the hard drive and RAM and reformat it to remove any old data. I’m just glad that I don’t use anything local. It’s all backed up…
On the drive out to the barn, my headache of two days went from mild to bad to worse. I get sinus headaches with migraine-like symptoms (light and sound sensitivity especially). My head was way too sensitive to go riding. I still went out to the barn since I hadn’t been out all week and…
It is easy to feel frustrated because I don’t know what to do when Kasane says “no I don’t want to do this.” I know how I used to ride: I’d insist that she do something. With Isis, if I insisted and she wasn’t clear on what I was asking (or more likely I wasn’t…
I usually ride English so I’m riding in a loose ring snaffle bit. Kasane has a Herm Sprenger KK Ultra 4 3/4″ snaffle with small losenge like piece in the middle of the snaffle. Rajiyyah’s bit is a similar design, except it has a copper mouth piece. When I ride Kasane, we usually ride with…
The barn where I board is full of wise old eyes: half of the horses are over 20. My old girl, Prize, is 28 and still teaches people (myself included) about riding and jumping. She’s a bright bay Arabian mare with three white socks, a snip, and a blaze. She’s not typey for an Arabian…
On Sunday morning, Tara invited me to come with her on a trail ride around the farm. The trail ride was fun and enlightening. Kasane was pulled out of the stall, saddled, and away we went (instead of working her in the ring first). Tara rode Rooster (Friesian/Paint cross), Carmen lead Geronimo (standardbred/QH cross), and…
Tomorrow morning we’re taking Kasane to have her saddles fitted. It’s been over a year since I purchased the Prestige Venus K monoflap saddle. It was fitted to her when she was butt high and she is now level (even slightly up hill). Because the saddles aren’t quite adjusted properly for her new physique, my…
Kasane had her saddle fitting yesterday and there were some pretty big surprises. First off, instead of being butt high, she’s leveled out. When the saddle fitter saw her, he said “Oh my!” at how much she has changed since the last time he saw her. At the saddle fitting last summer, her right side…
I tend to create playlists for stories I’m working on. I have a playlist on Rdio that I created for Lady in the Tree (novel) and also use for Ride Softly (short story). I was helping a friend with her writing project yesterday and we started discussing play lists we make for our characters. Here…
When Rajiyyah first came to my barn in March, she felt odd to ride. Instead of having her legs underneath her, she felt like her legs were scattered. This feeling was very similar to riding a green horse who feels braced and ready to flee. Her back was dropped and her head was up. She…
I spent this evening at the barn after an intensely stressful week of deadlines and conflicting priorities. So I went out and played with my girl. She was still in the barn when I got there. She yelled when she saw me. It’s been in the mid-70s, so beautiful weather and 20 degrees cooler than…
One of Isis’ scariest symptoms was her near-constant tripping. I tried various methods to help her: chiropractic treatment, acupuncture, massage, riding techniques, and other things. Before she was diagnosed with EPM, I spent years trying to figure out what was causing the tripping. Where there consistent factors in where or how we rode that contributed?…
Found this posted on Facebook. The video is amazing. I did some searching and found the original artist, sophianinam on YouTube, who created this video: Related Images: