September 17, 2008

We've had a lot of good work since the clinic in Marble Falls. Monday, I realized that I probably should try lunging Billie since I'd not done that yet, and with her staying in a stall for a few days it might be a good skill to have under our belt. Bev helped me with this on Monday. I nearly had a heart attack, too. Way too exciting for my likes. Bev handled the first part of getting her going around on the lunge line. Okay, really, Bev handled the wild maniac at the end of the lunge line till she settled down, then she turned her over to me. Something about using the energy that's there. Whatever.

I'm still having trouble directing this excess energy that Billie creates. No, really, it's gotten better, my reaction to it, but it's still coming out. What can I say...she's a horse.

I lunged her in all corners of the ring, till finally she had no more energy left. Then, she had to roll in the sand at the end of my lunge line. Not funny. But no exploding horse as I ended up with Sunday.

Don't you know, this morning we loaded her up to head to Ft. Worth. She was pretty good loading. Then the long ride in the trailer. Still good. Then unloading in Ft. Worth. Amazingly good horse. Sure, she looked around, had a startle or two, but really an absolutely trusting horse. After a bit we headed over to get her brand checked. They ended up shaving the hairs above the brand, and now it stands out really nicely. She was actually pretty good with the clippers! After, I took her in a practice ring to lunge. She was so hard to get going. I kept having the feeling that the little smartie-pants was getting ready to roll. Know what? She did! How embarrassing! One gal on horseback laughed and not too nicely. She quickly apologized, but big deal. We survived, and no exploding horse, thank God. She spooked periodically at the weird noises, yada yada, but generally seemed to relax.

I put her back into her stall, fed her, brushed her, then headed over for the marathon trainer meeting. Later, I took her over to our arena for a practice session, or should I say the practice session from hell? Let's see...it was crowded...some trainers were lunging/reprimanding/showing off in the arena. Then, some fool was moving chairs that scraped acrosss the concrete. Next, the same fool was dragging a heavy metal table/stand across same concrete. It's so much fun to have a bucking horse at the end of a lunge line while the other fools are lunging/reprimanding their horses right behind you...NOT. A bit later, some crackling noise, maybe a pop-gun? went off--Billie ran almost over me, made me fall, I did not loose the line, and she did a nice bring-the-hind and then came back to me as I got back up. Ouch. Oh, yeah, she rolled...again...what a pain. Some nice old guy tried to make me feel better (again, someone was laughing rudely) by telling me that Billie must feel very comfortable/trusting in my presence in order to feel comfortable enough to roll in this strange environment with all these horse around. Whatever. So, I'll try to take this as a pseudo-compliment. To ice our cake of a crappy warm-up (yes, there WERE some good moments), Billie flipped out while trotting over a raised pole (I didn't notice what the impetus was) and ran over me, slipped out of my hands, and was loose in the arena. Yikes. Of course, she circled back to me and wanted me to take up the lead again. What a baby. My goose is cooked. I'm really not having so much fun.

Oh, and I found out tonight that I go 68 in a total of 70 competitors. Isn't that fun? The event starts at 8am with the walk through with the judges. Great. Actually, this should give me lots of time to watch a lot of the others, learn the course, and lunge my maniac mustang. A good thing, right? Of course. Maybe I can get her to roll before we head into the arena. I can hope.