Honesty and in all fairness

For everyone who remembers me from the days of FHotD, you all know I can be rather outspoken at times and have no problem saying what I think. I can also be about as subtle as a brick thru a window at times, blunt and as one of my friends told me one time- "I know you'll be honest with me, even if it is brutally." He knew he could ask me anything and get a straight up, honest answer without all the gooey sugar coating or outright lying some people will do to spare the feelings of others. If someone is truly your friend, you *should* be able to tell them that something they are doing concerns you and they should hope that you *would* step up and say something if you see things going south for them.

So what does all of this have to do with the horses?

Well over the years and on the different blogs, I know there have been times that my comments or replies have rubbed people the wrong way, been taken the wrong way, been misunderstood or come across as rude, insensitive and maybe even downright mean. Most often that was not my intent. I have not "gone after" anyone in email- sending them "hate mail" nor have I blocked or deleted anyone's comments on my blog for pointing things out where I may have misspoken or contradicted myself, because honestly, I try not to do that to begin with.

I have noticed however, different things that have disppointed me in what I may have thought about someone and make me question my personal knowledge of and perception of them as well as other things about them.

We all know that posting online is opening ourselves up for critiscism. Good or bad, people are going to say something and respond. If we post photos or video, there is always good and bad to be found, and with the bad, there is room for improvement. If there is an issue with something, I try to offer a solution or ask- "Have you considered trying this?" unless there is an obvious solution to the problem, then I will come right out and say what it is.

Sometimes people have issues with their horses at home, sometimes it is at competitions. Some bloggers it seems like they never quite 'get there' because their horse(s) seem to come up lame, injured or otherwise taken out of the running in some way, shape or form. I feel bad for people that this happens to, but I also question what's going on that their horses all seem to be 'falling apart', breaking down and things just keep going to Hell on them.

I have also noticed a few people who have claimed- If *THIS* ever happens to MY horse, I will no longer do *THAT* with them. *That* being compete with them in whatever their chosen sport is- Jumping, barrel racing, endurance, or __________ fill in the blank. I picked jumping, barrel racing and endurance because those seem to be things that are A) popular with bloggers and B) tough jobs for our horses. But then even after proclaiming they will stop competing their horse in their chosen event, a few months down the road and guess what? They talk about taking their horse to the comepetitions and entering them to compete.

Now most of you who have seen pictures my OTTB mare or know of her, know she has a huge knee. It was injured at the track, long before I got her and it is why she no longer races. I knew this before bringing her home. It will forever be an issue to deal with. I also swore I will never expect her to jump and I never will. I have seen her bouncing around out in the pasture, going airborne and coming down on that leg and racing around without any problems, but still, I'm not going to put her over fences no matter how small they are or how much she may actually enjoy it. Taking her to the arena and going thru the barrel pattern a couple of times was all in fun. She had never done barrels before in her life and although she wasn't half bad at it, I'm not going to start patterning her and expect her to run and win money at it. For one thing, it doesn't happen overnight even for very talented horses, riders or both and more importantly, it's not fair to her.

Field trip!

The barn I'm boarding at has no arena so one of the girls and I decided to take the horses on a field trip and go to one of the local, public use arenas and work horses. Originally I was going to take both of mine and she was going to take two as well. There was supposed to be another girl with her two horses going along. Things slowly got whittled down to me and the one other girl, one horse each.

She left one horse home because she's had issues with him and wants to resolve them doing something else before getting hurt. I decided not to take the pony because he's been hauled, shown and knows the drill. My mare has been hauled to a few different arenas to work, when we lived in hellizona and she didn't handle it well. She didn't handle the move well either and is finally learning to cope and deal with things. I wanted to focus on her, so leaving the pony at home was the best option.

Her horse is for sale and she was hoping to get some photos of him in action. Apparently he has also never been in a 2 horse straight load trailer. Well it didn't take long to get him in and we were on the road.

We had a good time. My horse was a little wound up when we got there, as I expected. I got her legs wrapped, saddled up and lunged her a bit before deciding to get on. On the lunge line, she didn't exactly go around in nice round circles, but she did go around. She looked at everything, but she never spooked or got stupid so I put her bridle on, dropped my stirrups and climbed on.



Although she looked around a lot at first, she kept her head together and settled right down to work. We had a really good ride. I got some of our best canter work to date and she was light in the bridle, loose and felt really good. We had some incredible trot work and a few lovely canter departures in each direction. Then my friend set up some barrels to try her horse on the pattern. He did pretty good and I thought WTH? Why not give it a whirl? So we did.

I trotted her up to the first barrel on the right. Going around it she was a little wonky. We trotted to the 2nd barrel and around it a little wide. I pushed her into a lope and we made our way around the 3rd barrel, not so elegantly. My friend was laughing and quite impressed. She thought my mare looked pretty good on barrels. Mind you I was riding her in dressage tack. We did a couple more "runs" and the last time thru, I pushed for a little more, guided my mare around the barrel and let her go a little to bring it home. She enjoyed that.

Barrels are not something I will be trying to compete her with. My mare can run and may possibly be good at it, but this was all in fun. I wouldn't expect my mare at 18 years old to really be competitive in barrels and more importantly I doubt her knee would hold up. I really love this mare, why would I want to set her up for injury or a total fail?

After untacking and giving her a chance to roll- she didn't.



Love that face....

Photos don't lie

As riders, we strive to improve. We try to fix things we think we are doing wrong. We don't focus on things we think we're doing right. And then someone comes along and says something and depending on our mood, their words, the tone of their voice and our own opinion of them.....

Yeah. Things change. I used to worry about my lower leg and my hands, a Lot. My hands were no longer an issue after a friend of mine was standing next to the trainer I had started working for about a month before. Watching me ride the trainer told my friend, "She's got the nicest hands I have seen in a long, long time." Booyah! But my lower leg was still an issue in the back of my mind. Until the day I seen pics of me riding one of my mares and I seen for myself that no matter how she was moving, my legs were always where they belonged. Seeing pics of me on another horse and yep. There's my lower leg locked on where it belonged. Riding my WB mare forced me to keep my lower leg back under me in position or she puttered out. I no lnger worry about my lower leg anymore.

Tonight discussing riding and proper position with one of the girls at the barn, she asked me if pic's can help your riding. Absolutely! Pic's don't lie. You're either doing it right, kind of close or you're not. There may be a few pic's when it all comes together and that's great, but when there's only a few out of 20-30 or so, showing things not right or needing work, well now you know what you need to work on and fix.

The same girl has been dying to ride my mare. Since she's finally up to weight and I've been on her, I let her climb on and take my horse for a spin. It's working out well since she's getting to ride a bigger horse, try out a variety of tack, learn new things and I get to see my horse move. Win!