before i begin my post..a bit of a side note on the comments made on my last post: i love that we are all crazy:) and i read them out loud to wendy here and she agrees that we must all be on drugs. (robyn this is more info that you can pass along to your work friends;) )

ok onto my life...
weather has cleared up and things are getting nice around here, the grass is getting really lush and green and the outdoor ring (sorry, school) is drying out. Its such nice footing though that it dries out in a matter of hours while the weston barn takes what...weeks? months? until its usable again after spring. The competition season has also started up in full force. Hayley is off to a show tomorrow to compete a client's horse named Freelancer (who is gorgeous, tall and leggy and chesnut and a beautiful mover....the tall and leggy part makes it sound like im talking about a person lol) but its his first show so he'll probably be excitable. and he has to do counter-canter (which is when they canter leading the outside leg rather than the inside for non-horsey people...its much harder forthem to balance so they have to develop more muscle for it) and apparently his counter-canter is not so great so hayley is a nervous wreck. Apparently the owner (claire) is quite competitive so this just makes hayley even more nervous. I really hope it goes well for her.
Yesterday lucy went to an event with two of her ponies, Sky (the one hayley schools now) and Sandy (this really tiny pony that was her first ever pony and he is SO tiny....like the size of the paint pony that was poco's predecessor....for those barn members who are reading this) and she won on Sandy and came second on Sky because Sky knocked a rail in stadium but she was first after dressage with her. Now lucy has never struck me as a great rider so either the competition was poor or she really steps it up on show days....who knows. But she was very pleased. I think Serena was glad she didn't win both because she doesnt want he rto get over-confident or cocky. not that second place is a big knock down but i guess the theory is right...
I've had two really nice lessons on Teasle, both today's and yesterdays. Yesterday i borrowed Emma's spurs and that really helped the whole 'create forwardness and energy' problem tha ti was struggling with. THen today i didnt have spurs but i really worked and my seat has gotten drastically better in the past two days since David made me fix my elbow-bracing problem that i didnt even know existed so im not holding Teasle back with my body language anymore or something...but its helping. Plus today David made me work on doing shoulder-ins which is a collecting excerise that makes them use their hind-end better (its when the shoulders are moved in from the rail so that the horses are moving on three tracks rather than two since the outside front leg is on its own track and then the inside front leg and outside hind leg are on the same track and then the inside hind leg is on the third track..confusing but hopefully people can get a mental image) , and he made me do alot of suppling/lateral work on the left rein because Teasle is soooo stiff on that rein. So iwas pretty exhausted after the ride. Then yesterday afternoon i rode Perry again who is hands down THE laziest pony alive (ok..maybe tied with Pooh Bear) and thank god i had spurs again because David kept being like 'more forward, more forward, he has to learn to work into the bit not against it...' so i felt lik ei was pushing him forward every stride. Then David made me do sitting trot (just for a short while though since im so big on perry) and it was so funny feeling to sit to such a tiny little trot! I worked a bit on shoulder-fore (which is not quite shoulder-in but sort of the step leading up to it...perry cant do shoulder-ins yet). So end of story is i was WIPED after yesterday and fell asleep at like 8 after watching over the hedge with wendy during dinner.
But the big news is that today after we had finished everything up David had me tack up Rolex and then he asked me how i was feeling and here was where i had the big inner debate. If i said i was tired than i could probably get out of riding perry cause iwas pretty tired but i didnt want to seem lazy/ungrateful but if i said good then i'd probably have to ride perry in which case i couldnt just go and crash and nap after a rather stressful day since hayley spent all day preparing for the show so i was responsible for most of the work on the yard) but i went with the saying good and sucking up having to ride again. well david was like 'well if your in a good mood then i dotn want to ruin it by making you ride the lazy pony so you can ride grumpy for me instead'...grumpy is my nick-name for nyrobe who is THE grumpiest/nastiest-tempered horse i have ever known but who is a phenomenal mover and is one of David's main competition horses!! at first i was confused and i was like 'you mean warm-up rolex? rolex isnt grumpy" and he was like 'no no the grump...nyrobe, he needs to be worked today and i dont have time' and my jaw just DROPPED. i was like 'aaaah.....sure!' and i was so intimidated because nyrobe is..i mean he's not huge or really bad or anything but its just cool cause he's trained to such a high level...not that i could get him to do anything at those high levels, but still it was kinda intimidating. so i tacked him all up and got on him and serena came over and was like 'you'll want a neck-strap just in case' and in my head im going 'uhhhhh why?....what is this horse going to do' but i just went and got a neck strap (which is exactly as it sounds, a strap of leather that just goes around the horses neck in frong of the saddle so that if anything happens the rider can grab hold of it) and then im getting on and david goes 'you'll want to keep the draw reins close at hand, you dont need to ride with them in your hand, but have easy access to them' and im thinking agian 'uuuuuh why? whay should i be prepared for' but i just did as i was told so basically im getting all psyched out being told to be prepared for something bad happening and im thinking 'great this will REALLY help me relax and not be tense while riding' and then verity comes over and goes 'dont worry, fliss told me that as long as you dont ask anything of him he doesnt act up' greeeeeeeeeeat so now i either have to deal with a horse that acts up or just not do anything on him and not take advantage of such a cool opportunity, awesome choice right there. but since im not exactly scared of horses acting up (sorry mom....i know that makes you a bit worried about the situation im willing to put myself in;) ) after warming up a bit i asked him to come forward adn be on the bit and then i asked for a bit of leg-yielding and then i asked for him to change his tempo at the trot....i mean nothing difficult at all, and even still im sure that iw as either not doing things right or not looking too great but still i figured that i didnt have to look stunning my first time on. and for the majority of the ride i was too scared to try to sit to his trot because it was HUGE, like he's not a big horse at all but his trot was just massive! absolutely nothing id ever experienced before, and i saw myself in the mirror and even tho he looked horrible compared to what david makes him do i thought i looked pretty damn fancy:) after a while i did brave the sitting and it took me a good lap or two around the arena to adjust and even attempt to use my legs while sitting, but after a while it felt easier to sit to...i wasnt sitting amazingly, but i wasnt getting thrown all over the place either so it was a start. David asked me how he felt and all i could say at the time was 'his trot is amazing...but so hard to sit to' and he was like 'this is why you have to work on your seat more, so that eventually you'll be able to actually ride horses like him' so looks like im going to be working alot on my seat in the coming weeks/months (since david also pointed out its something that doesnt come in a short while, but i WANT it in a short while lol im so impatient). so anyway i really didnt do much or ride for very long but it was a really cool experience and even though nyrobe and i dont get along well at all on the ground because he's so mean-tempered...it was awesome to ride him. so now that i have written a novel on my exciting ride on nyrobe that from the ground was probably the least exciting ride to watch...im going to go read my book and go to bed so that i can make it through the last day before my day off!
oh also...this new mare and her foal arrived today because they want to putthe mare to vurly but obviously the foal is too young to be seperated but the foal is the cutest and friendliest thing! its got SUCH long legs and is huge compared to the other two foals that are/were here since both those foals were out of small horses/large ponies and this mare is quite big (like 16.2-16.3 at least) and it just walked right up to the door to meet me when i went to look at it in the stall.....soooo cute! ok im done now. gnight