Sunday, December 09, 2007

a minor success!

i got on first time with no arguments at all!!!!! YAY!!!!

I was pleased i went down when i did - late morning, cold when i left the house but lovely and warm at the yard, sun heating up the stable!

so after i'd mucked out etc i thought i might as well get on with it. got her in and ready and we were mounted by 1.

Had a bit of a think about the bridle, but some click/treat got her into that idea and not arguing, so that was good.

and, as I say, the mounting was excellent! She moved up to the right place immediately so i didn't have to move her on an extra step or anything, so click/mount/treat and job done! and then she just wanted to stand there.

the ridden wasn't quite so good; sometimes we were nearly getting it, sometimes we got it, and sometimes we lost it altogether (my fault - need to work on less is more whilst remembering that my inside hand has too much of a tendency to be pulled back when going round a corner!).

Shame it's impossible to shut the gate behind me, would have prevented a minor mishap of being taken to the barn!

Some distraction as well - a man working overtime, in hi viz, turned up to put electrics in to the large greenhouse that has appeared at the end of the arena...that was fascinating!

Did think about trying click/treat to take her out of the yard along under the willow, but when i went along there, all she could see was the lab puppy (about 6 - 8 months) in the garden and thus wasn't interested in going further. but, we didn't nap back to the stable!

then after about 50 minutes the heavens opened, so off I got. minor drizzle's all very well, but this was a downpour!

given that it was nearly 2, i decided to leave her in - she didnt' want to go out anyway (was very keen to be in when i first went to fetch her) so went and did my shopping and got diesel, and then went back down to set her for the night. Made sense, as the shop is nearer the yard than the house by several miles..

so i'm really pleased

and the other good thing, managed to get my video editing software to do it's thing - had to uninstall and re-install, but now working properly . clearly hadn't properly installed last time! so i may be able to grab the odd still off it, still working out how it works of course!

3 comments:

ae said...

Congratulations Claire! It looks like a major sucess! :)

Jean said...

Good day indeed! Be patient with yourself as far as the riding goes. It takes a long time to master a technique and to get the desired results. If it were easy magic, then everyone would be in the Olympics!

cptrayes said...

Great progress with the mounting!

C