Riding Missy In Spurs

Here, it's late. Late as in 2 am. So, this post shall be quick!

Well, today I woke up at noon. Then, at 1 or 2 pm, I went to Lisa's house and swam in their pool until 8 pm. We had so much fun! I learned to dive.. I know what you're going to say: she's JUST NOW learning to dive? Well, when you have a horse or three or four, you don't have much time for swimming, much less learning fancy swimming tricks! Gimme a break guys! :)

Anyways, we went to SunnyBrook. I grabbed Missy and found her halter was askew. And by askew, I mean ASKEW. As in, it was like upside down. I took one look at her and laughed sooo hard! It was funny, and made me smile! I took her into the crossties, did a quick grooming, picked her feet out, and flysprayed her.

One problem we have here in Indiana is horse flies. They're so annoying, and they hurt. One time, I was riding Emmy and a horse fly landed on her butt. She gave one huge buck, and then just kept on going. While it bit her! It was biting her for a few more minutes until I finally turned around, saw what it was, and slapped it dead! Hah! Today, while swimming, about every 10 minutes we would see a horsefly and all 4 of us (Lisa, Jake, Ry and I) would duck underwater and start splashing to try and get it away. There was so much commotion about horse flies, none of us wanted to get out of the pool! :)

Getting back to the story..

I saddled up Missy and took her out to the field to ride. I had my spurs on (bumper spurs, bleh) and wanted to try them out. We started with some walking, working on her tucking her head up and lowering it, to give her that western pleasure look. I love how beautiful she is, and how much she listens to my legs. I barely have to use my hands for anything. When we started trotting, I didn't use my spurs to really cue her, just tapped her with them to let her know they're there. Let me say, it's very awkward using bumper spurs after jumping an English horse in normal spurs. But, oh well, they're still useful. I just hope one day, Lisa will deem me worthy of normal spurs? Yeah, like that's going to happen..

I cued for a canter, using my spurs. As I cued with my spurs, I gave see-sawed the reins to ask her to bring her head down. She ducked her head, and launched into a beautiful canter. It wasn't a western pleasure canter, but it wasn't a "I'M A BARREL HORSE, DUR LETS GO GO GOOO!" canter. It was beautiful. I circled her and then asked for a lead change. BAM lead change. I asked for a little speed going down a straight away, and she perked her ears and took off. It made me think she was saying, "finally, you're asking me for something!" We walked some more and then trotted a little, then did some more speed work while trying to maintain composure.

Next time, we'll work on stopping. But still.. her speed.

Oh, the wonders of spurs.