Great weekend camping

Maggie and I went to Decatur last weekend for a TTC competition and had a great time. It was run by the Cross Timbers Equestrian Trail riding club that maintains trails in North Texas.  Fiera is starting to come along in her riding. This was the first time I wasn't nervous when we headed out and I felt like I could control her pace and stop her and do whatever needed doing. Our obstacles were a little better than last time...Our score was a 62 this time, up from 52.5 the ride before, so I can't complain overall. We still aren't sidepassing straight or all the time...and gate opening is about non-existent, though we did practice that a little on Sunday. 

Maggie had a great weekend. Her horse Dixie and her placed 3rd in a tough Horseman class (beating her mother by several placings). She also did well in the in hand competition the next day...I think she is questioning giving up Dixie for a new pony at this point. They looked like a real team this weekend.  Fiera also did well in hand. I figure she should. What else do you get when you raise a baby you can't ride for several years.

Speaking of which...Fiera turned 5 on Saturday. she's a big girl now.

Juicing and Fiera

I realized my blog was getting cold and needed a post, even if it was quick. 

I'm juicing now in an effort to lose weight and it's working well. I have shifted to eating and drinking  mostly fruits and vegetables and making meat secondary. I like juicing so much more than eating all those vegetables but as my system clears out vegetables are so much more appealing. More on that later. 

Fiera is doing great. I'm riding her several times per week. I'm on the great saddle hint right now. 

Year in review 2012

For the last few days, I have been thinking that I need to write a blog post summing up the year 2012. Only, I never seem to have time to sit down and do it, which is really silly, because I had nothing but time for the past couple weeks. First I was sick, and then I was just tired and coughing. So, I guess I really have had time, I just haven't made myself do it yet. So as I'm driving to work, I'm using Siri to help me post my blog. This is not going to be without disaster. Siri often makes mistakes in what I say as I drive. Plus, I can't really proofread if I'm driving. So, I thought I would start a blog post, and then proofread it once I got to a safe and secure location.

The first area that I spent a great deal of time working on 2012 was diet and fitness. I have a modest goal to finally get below 200 pounds, a weight I have not seen since giving birth to Maggie in 1997 (Except for the one day in 2007 when I weighed in at 199, the day before Thanksgiving). Unfortunately, I did not reach this goal. I ended the year at 215. However, I did lose weight from when I really started working on it which was April. I was actually down  213 the week before Christmas.   Then I got the flu and accompanying inflammation (and bad holiday eating choices--pizza, ice cream, chinese food, etc) caused me to gain some of the weight back this week. I am already going back down to that 213 weight and my short term goal is be down to 200 or less by April 1. (I'm learning that my goals lack deadlines, so this is a goal of 5 pounds per month)

Even though I did not reach my goal, I feel like 2012 was a success because I have greatly changed my attitude toward working out and food. I now crave the working out but I used to think was a chore. And when I have to eat food that isn't as good for me, I really think about it with some trepidation. I know longer enjoy eating at chicken express more then very occasionally. I used to eat there several times per week, and in July made it a goal to eat there no more than once a week. However, I soon found that I didn't like eating there at all. (OK, i slipped last Friday and ate cheese sticks) Of course, this was partially aided by Maggie, who became a vegetarian this year. She does eat fish, but having to find restaurants that work for her diet has made me make better choices as well.

For 2013, my goal is to work out 5 to 6 times a week in a combination of weights and cardio. I wear a Fitbit every day to track my ambient movement. I have a goal of net calories each day of no more than 1750-1800. I am also going to spend the next three weeks working the wheat dairy  and Soy out of my diet. This will probably not be a permanent change, but I want to see if some of my lingering sinus issues are food related. I ordered the DVD series of Les Mills combat, and am using daily burn and daily burn tracker to have other workouts for variety. As soon as my cough goes away I will begin cardio workouts again. In the meantime, I hope to start walking again Thursday or Friday. I may also be able to do some weight workout even before I can really get back to cardio. With my history of asthma, and bronchitis, the flu leftovers have really kicked me in the fanny.

The next memorable area for 2012 has to do with work. 2012 found my work very profitable and prosperous. I have been very blessed with more private contract hours and I've ever had before. The fall of 2012 found me in a position I have wanted for two years. I am the part-time music therapist at Southlake ISD. I work with a wonderful friend named Melynda . I work three full days per week, with preschool and special-needs children. I knew that I wanted the job when I heard it was posted over year ago. But they hired someone else initially. That girl went back to school for the position came open again. I applied for it again this summer, but somebody else got the job. That girl  got a job full-time in another school District. I waited all summer to finally be interviewed. They interviewed three people, and I didn't get the job. They hired someone else, then she found out her husband was being transferred out-of-state. And I got the job!. I feel very blessed to work in such a wonderful school district. I've had good feedback from my teachers and students, and hope this job continues for many years to come.

While I was waiting to hear about the school district job I took on more contracts. I had gotten up to 20 hours of private in-home contracts (which is full time in the grand scheme of contact hours, paperwork and drive time). When I took the job with the school district, I tried for a short while to continue seeing everyone, but it quickly became evident that this is not going to work! I now see 12 hours of in home clients each week, in addition to my weekly school district. It has worked out to be a good balance, except that I miss being home at night as I was all summer. The extra work is helping to pay off bills, and has enabled cash flow purchases such as a different car,  a new transmission for Peter's car, and a new stove when ours broke just before Christmas. I feel like the Lord has blessed me in many ways this year.

Maggie and I were incredibly blessed in 2012 to go to many of the  NATRC ride (side note...Siri won't type NATRC. I will only write "in ATRC". When I said NAYTRACK that didn't work either, lol)  I was unable to attend one, so while she is getting 100% jacket, I am only able to buy a jacket onto which I will embroidery 93%, which is what you get for attending 13 out of 14 rides. Maggie ended the year as Junior reserve champion for the United States as well as Junior reserve champion for the region. At first she was very disappointed that she was not the regional champion, but then we found out that she was High Point average score Junior rider. This is a huge national award and made her very happy. Her horse also earned a national championship. What this means is that her horse got either one first and two seconds or Or two first and one second, one of those ride being out-of-state. Since she was the only junior running open all season she got her placings but no trouble. But we had to attend a minimum of 10 rides for her to gather the required 60 point. During the process, we went to Missouri to a ride there at was very difficult. We also made some good friends along the way. The Lineback's from Georgia, came to many of the rides, as Tammy was working on the highest NATRC award, the Presidents cup. We were able to spend a lot of time with Tammy and her daughter Marcy through all the riding. Their friendship has been a huge blessing. In fact, Maggie is going to attend the NATRC national convention in Denver Colorado in February. She will be flying alone and staying with the Linebacks. 

My own personal NATRC goals were not Met this year. I had hoped to also get my national championship, but the out-of-state first or second eluded me. After starting the year very strong, my year fizzled a bit. I Received my first and second placing early in the year. However, I could never get a first or second placing out-of-state. I ended up in fourth place for the year regionally. I did not place nationally.

This year we are both backing off heavy competition to give the horses a break. We have opted to ride in the CP (competitive pleasure) division, which is easier and gives us more time for lounging after the ride. We have good friends who ride novice and they are committing to riding a lot of rides, so I expect we will spend time riding with them. I expect to return to open in a year or two. I will be attending and NATRC rides with Liberty, but I am also starting Fiera in Texas Trail challenge. Maggie is going to concentrate on school now that she is in the ninth grade, and going to so many NATRC rides cuts into the days she can attend school (school kind of frowns on you not being there).

I need to talk about Fiera's training the last month...but that's another post.

This blog post has gone on long enough. I will be proofreading since I dictated it through Siri. However, please forgive, and possibly be amused by, any mistakes that you fine as reading it. I am not a great proofreader.

Fiera in training

So today I had thought I would ride Fiera but when push came to shove, loud school children and being alone in the pasture got to me and I didn't ride. I tacked her up to pony her off liberty and then realized that the girth I had put on her was the same one Liberty needed for his saddle so in the end it was all ground work.

I 'drove' her tacked and saddled around the pasture. I wanted to Practice the reining technique of only guiding her when I meant to and other wise leaving her mouth alone. At first it was easy but then the other horses in other pastures got riled up and that gave me something to practice keeping her attention over. It got kind kind of exciting because I didn't have a lead an she was acting very Bucky very close to me. So we walked in to make some tack changes.

I used the bit I have always used and she kept chewing on it so I swapped to Oly' s but and the excessive chewing stopped. (Note to self, no one likes that other bit; sell it and buy another Myler). After changing bits and adding a lead things were good for another little while but she got tired of working and when I flipped the line at her or a whoa she went into a bucking and rearing fit that made me happy I wasn't riding. She was determined to have her way and I want not going to influence her. But I did. So we did more ground work, some lingering at different speeds and lots of direction changes. I do believe I had the last laugh.

Not sure when I will ride her again. I'm not convinced I have a saddle that fits and I think I'd like to see her not have such a temper first. I was going to take her to Stillwater but that's not going to work out right now. Getting a new stove and moving Maggie's horse to Azle is killing my training budget. I will have to settle for lessons for now.

Harry Whitney last day

Today did not go so well. I thought it was going to be great because she seemed to have her attention on me right away and I got I got on quickly and she was doing great. We were walking forward and trotting. But then about 30 minutes in she began to look outside the pen and get jumpy and begin to look for 'excuses' to spook and started to become heavier and heavier. I was moving her around and I thought changing her thoughts but there were little spots I was missing. So another bird flew up and spooked her and off I came. I had long reins to keep her relaxed but I couldn't get them back. I almost got it back but I didn't and then hit the ground. I got her back and hopped back on or a few minutes but I felt the tension starting to build so I got off and went back to ground work. Harry came over and showed me what I was doing wrong which was not making her stay with me all the time. In my efforts to be more soft tr last few days I had stopped demanding her immediate attention. Harry worked with her and she was sticky even for him so it's not just that I'm not on time or soft. She is really sticky in her thoughts. He showed me how to demand her complete attention at all times. This will be a challenge. He also got on her for awhile and showed me the same things. She does not want to give up her thoughts. Them I got back on and rode her a bit more just to feel how she was post Harry.

Her attention is really hard to get. She needs 100% of all attention all the time. Even when I think I'm paying attention I find that she had snuck out on me to the happy grass filled place horses go to avoid humans. I see now how much she has been running me instead of actually being with me. Ironically Liberty is far more with me than she is. She's the first one to greet us but it's all on her terms not the terms I have set. It takes a lot of energy.

Harry Whitney Monday:playing outside

Since I want Fiera to be a trail horse it seemed that it would a good idea to go outdoors to work. Originally we thought we'd work in 3 groups of 3 and all go outside but several people surprised us by not wanting to go outside. So, Betsy, Mauri and I went out to the back field to work in the back field with jumps set up as obstacles to work around. Mauri is a barrel racer so worked on barrels slowly with relaxation. Betsy worked on getting April to be with her when she would rather go her own way. I worked not being terrified of riding in the open on a windy day with the other horses doing their own things. This will be hard to believe, but I was initially scored for not paying attention to my horse's wandering thoughts because I was talking (someone wanted to know where I got my tights). But I know Harry allow me to get in those pickles and scolds me to get my attention.

Mounted she did great. We walked in a few straight lines today. Then she got bored and I had trouble keeping her attention. Harry is having trouble convincing me to turn loose of the reins and let her move out on a loose rein. We notice she is chewing on the bit and I'm to interrupt that by scratching her withers, pulling her hair or something to make her stop. I'm to make her go somewhere with purpose. When I have ridden her out with other horses so far she has been very concerned about where the other horses are and what they are doing. It was great to work at our own thing and keep her attention. I also practiced my rein technique and it's getting better. We spent a lot of time practicing turns and keeping her thoughts with me.

When the ride was over, and a bit before we started, we had the 'afraidofthewoodsrodeo' and the trailer again. She came back to me much quicker than either of the last two days, but she is really worried by that spot on the property. Harry said it was no wonder...there are no horses over there. Any that went must have gotten eaten since there aren't any there. After my lesson she really had a meltdown though. She started snorting and carrying on in a big, dramatic way. I put onto practice all the things Harry had told me and was able to send her into the scary spots without driving her but I never really got her calm. She would go in and then trot out. The big thing we accomplished here was that she is no longer running over me when she's scared. To or row, if it's. It raining, we are going to start over there. Then I will work on turning her loose and letting her trot some so that I know we can stop without me clutching her or pulling on her.

I'm finding it interesting that she shies at things behind her just like her mom, and she goes to bucking just like her sisters. I'm a little worried that she is not going to be a good trail horse. I worry that she has unmanageable fears I won't be able to fix. I know I can keep doing the things I'm doing but I may be ready for a professional.

I figured out over the last couple days why Liberty hates the bit. I have always kept contact. In the beginning I let him go on and only used his reins of necessary. Then over time I got more and more contact but he was unhappy so I switched to the s hack. Now I'm going to go back to a snaffle and start over with many of these exercises and see if I can get the tension out. I will compete in my hack for the foreseeable future but I think that I can help his wither soreness and some of the stuff the chiro works on with more relaxation through the top line.

I'm loving the photos of me on her. I don't feel like I look too large on her and I often feel too big on Liberty.

More later. Tomorrow is the last day. I'm sad to see it end, but ready for the real world.

Harry Whitney clinic

Today is the second day of the Harry Whitney clinic I'm attending in East Texas. Yesterday we got Fiera started properly under saddle. I have ridden her over the last year and a half. Not a lot, not regularly but some. She does ok at home but out in nature she is afraid of a lot of stuff. As usual, she was good in the arena. Harry needed to fix me on some things but Fiera was good. She has bonded to the horse next to her and that horse's owner took her horse for a walk and I thought it was going to be bad. But Harry called it an opportunity and he was right. We worked through her concern. I also worked on her tendency (which i taught) to turn into me when i halt her on a circle. Eventually i mounted up and rode. Harry told me just to let her go with very little direction. I'm supposed to only pick up a rein and turn her if she is not with me and thinking the same thoughts that I am thinking. I am also supposed to ride with a very loose rein. I told Harry that all my bad wrecks have occurred with loose reins so I'm going to need a lot of reminding. I know that part of the tight rein business is because of my early dressage lessons. What they mean by contact is different than the way I need to ride now. We worked to get her to come to me quietly at the mounting block as well as teaching me to ask for her thoughts more softly. I practiced not driving her where I want to get her to go but to bring her to making a choice. It was really hard to not pick up my extra hand to push her instead of leading her to make the right decision. I had to practice not mixing up my cues to pull her instead of getting her thought to move away.

Ironically I was starting to discover riding this way a bit with Liberty in the beginning, on,unto have some older NATRC rider/judges tell me I was doing it wrong. Evidently, I was doing it right and now I have to go back redo some things with him. I also plan to reintroduce a snaffle to him. But, I digress.

Today was a big day for us. Yesterday we had a lot of trouble betting ready for the day something really spooked her in the woods and she was bucking and hopping back and forth. One of the other people for the clinics was worried and he came to help. She wasn't happy but I wasn't worried. She wasn't pulling back and I could not get into help her with her being so excited. At the trailer today, tacking up, she was agitated again, thinking the woods were going to get her and not let her go. But today I saw it coming and untied her and starting doing the ground work we did yesterday and she settled quickly. She continued to look for things at which to spook but I kept doing yesterday's exercises and she settled. We had about 15 minutes before my lesson so I decided to play with the mounting block. I quickly discovered that while she would line up to the mounting block on the near side but not the off side. So I did all the exercises from the day before so I could practice getting on and off the offside. Only I could never get her quite lined up. We got close and then it was time for my lesson so I let it go. I realized that it was related to the inability to stop straight on the circle and best left for another day.

We started in hand again but quickly progressed to being able to mount. I told Harry what I had been doing outside And asked if we could work on that a bit. So, I brought her to the block and she lined up and I mounted on the offside. Evidently whatever we had done outside had stuck and she figured it out. She sat with me and was still and I petted her. then we started walking around the arena. Harry showed me a completely different way to handle my reins. I'm
Not even sure I can describe it here so that it makes sense. I have always used what I thought was a leading rein with Fiera. What I discovered was that I was actually pulling back. So now, instead of sliding a Hand toward the nose on the side I want to turn I actually make that hand loose and pull the rein through with the opposite hand. I just could not figure it out. Harry had to go hand over hand with me to get it. This will take some getting used to. When it goes well, the turn is so soft. When it goes wrong, I do it the way I always did and pull back and then Harry scolds me. Bad habits die hard. As yesterday I was to let her move off without restriction but began to have more of a plan. So, I figure out where I want to go and head that way, but if her thoughts strayed, we addressed those thoughts and then went back to the plan. We trotted a bit, but I discovered I could not steer in the new way I was shown some went back to the walk. when she went fast a few times I pick up the rein and turned her in a circle to stop.

Things were going great and I thought about asking for a trot but hadn't done it yet. All of a sudden she spooked and then went to bucking. Harry is so calm, bend her, bend her...everyone is saying bend her. I'm up there thinking well, duh, bend her, but which way. I did get her bent. She turned and sighed and quit bucking. Harry told me that I was really goosing her after she pushed me forward. Again I'm thinking, duh, yeah, I was off balance. Two awesome things happened though. I didn't fall off and neither of us held a grudge. I have now ridden through my horse bucking. I have always fallen off before. And I know that she will quick bucking before I fall off. This is a great relief after Tonka Jane.

The rest of the lesson was spent with me practicing how to turn her properly and monitor her attention. Tomorrow I think we are taking to the outdoors where she is afraid.