Another recap

      I've been staying on track with my goal of spending a little time with the horses everyday, so that has kept me quite busy.  Plus this weekend was the fourth of July!  Now I finally have a little time to bring everybody up to date.

       On Saturday we took Marsan and Cherroke to the gymkhanas and I'm happy to say that they both did great.  Last year gymkhanas with Cherroke and Marsan as a pair did not go well at all!  This year I was able to ride Marsan around by herself in the ring and she was really calm.  We also got to do some loping in the arena which was a lot of fun too.  Trailer loading was the only thing that we had a lot of trouble with.  I was so exhausted that first I got angry and then I got introverted, but we made it home eventually.  So I guess next time we want to travel we need to do a little more preparation with trailering.  The strangest thing was that when got home and unloaded, we asked Marsan and Cherroke to get in again and they both did, as calm as could be.  I guess it must have been the enviroment that made them nervous.  I didn't have enough time to put Gingy online that night so I just said "hi" to him :)

         On Sunday I went for a ride with my friend and that was actually quite enjoyable.  We mostly rode in the corral, but at the end we took the horses over to an adjacent valley and had a couple of nice canters :)  Then came the big storm.  We had a hail, lightning, and thunder for most of the night.  I was quite worried about the horses because they went up in the trees and I didn't want them to get fried!  Thankfully they were all okay and they didn't colic from eating to much grass either(whew!).  Again Gingy sort of got slighted on time and I determined to play with him more the next day.

          Monday we went on an early morning ride since the horses had been out eating all night.  Once again we had a lot of fun and Marsan was very calm.  Lately I've been trying really hard to do in my body what I want Marsan to do in hers and I'm noticing a good change.  When I ask her for lateral flexion sometimes she thinks about drifting off then it's like she realizes that my energy isn't up so she stops.  I also did some intense playing with Gingy on Monday, however it wasn't quite what I expected.  Gingy was quite distance and I didn't feel like I was really in sync with him.  We did a lot of different things, but nothing seemed to really interest either of us.  I was really struggling to figure out why I felt so out of harmony with Gingy and here's my theory: although I took pains to match his energy, and not micromanage him both of which have been problems in the past, I didn't match his expression or level of expressiveness.  I'm hoping to play with Gingy today while keeping my theory in mind and I guess we'll see what happens.

           All and all it's been a big horsey weekend with lots of dissapointments and lots of fun too.