Crossrails, Cowgirling, and Covid

It seems like these past couple of weeks the amount of time that both me and my horses are all healthy at the same time seem to be few and far between. Luna these days seems to be my biggest problem child (another post on that to follow) but last weekend seemed to be one of the few times they were both sound and I was healthy! The weather was perfect both days to put some nice rides on both Montego and Luna.

Starting with Luna, I finally got around to setting up my phone and PIVO to grab some video of us. I’m coming up on a year owning her and while we might not be sticking to my original timeline for training, we have made a lot of progress and definitely have grown our bond this past year. I really feel like I know and trust this for, I often for forget she is only 5 with just how willing to try new things for me. Every time I throw my leg over her, I am fully smiling with how much fun I am having with this young horse. The sun was out so I decided to finally get my jumper hopefully actually over some jumps. I set up one tiny cross rail and raised cavaletti rail in the ring to play around with. The thing sometimes with Luna is she is super curious and nothing really phases her. A perk for sure in some things. Like when forgets the mounting block is besides her and almost completely trips over it to get to the grass. Yes many baby horses would panic at something in between their feet, but not this big dog. But you know when it’s not super helpful, when I am trying to get her to pick up her feet going over rails. She will go over no problem, whether she knocked them down while trying. As no surprise, the tiny cross rail did not phase her. We walked over it both directions and then after warming up at the trot just pointed her right at it and trotted right over it like she’s done it 1000 times before. Every time we went over it she got really big praise and pats. By the end of the ride she was practically dragging me to go over the cross rail.

We kept it pretty short and sweet but was really happy with our first cross rail progress. Of course the PIVO that I set up to try and capture this moment failed us miserably. Every time we went down the long side of the camera, the tracking lost us and headed straight to the brush pile. I think I need to move the camera angle to the middle of the ring for an overall better filming experience. Still caught a little bit of video that is helpful to see what we need to continue working on. Lots of suppling.

While my ride with my 5 year old was uneventful and very productive, my 14 year old had a different type of ride in store for me. I think I mentioned in some previous posts, but Montego has it out for the baby cows that are back on the property. Although they are in the back pasture and usually we cannot hear them or see them during our ride he knows they’re there and throughs some pretty big tantrums about it. Another lady B in our barn has been getting into dressage again after having her weekly lessons on him. She’s been trying to get some extra rides in between her lessons, but Montego has been making it difficult when he thinks the demon cows are after him. So she walked him around for a little but then the cows moo’d and I had to cowgirl up and give him a bit more of a real ride.

The last least fun C of this post was, unfortunately two weeks of my early October was cut short riding wise due to catching COVID from a co-worker. While the actual symptoms were over after 3 days, I was stuck in my house waiting for my quarantine to be over. Luckily being fully vaccinated my symptoms were very minor and I was back riding my horses in no time!