Due to the very cold weather, we are opting to cancel lessons for this Wednesday, January 18th. Stay warm and see you next week!

Congratulations, you have intelligently chosen a qualified instructor, and you are ready to take an official riding lesson. Good for you. If you own your own horse, or if you are using one of the trainer’s lesson horses, please arrive at least ten minutes early. If you own your own horse ask the trainer ahead of time if you will be riding first or doing ground work. Sometimes trainers want to work with students on the ground first to see how competent and confident he or she is.  Insist on learning to groom the horse yourself. Do not tie the horse on your own however. Let the trainer show you how, and where, to tie the horse.  If you are riding, learn how to saddle and bridle and groom yourself. If it takes an entire lesson or two to learn these skills, so be it.

During the lesson, keep your ears open , be quiet and mindful, but give the instructor feedback . If you are not understanding how to do something, ask about it  until you get it. Do not forget to breathe! So many students begin to breathe very shallow, or stop breathing altogether as soon as the horse takes its first step. If you have taken lessons before, from another instructor, do not say “Well my last instructor told me to do this exercise …blah…blah”. If you are going to doubt your instructor/trainer, then TEACH YOURSELF! Listen and breathe, listen and breathe. Do what you are instructed to do.  Enjoy.

When the lesson is over, ask questions that you want to ask. Then learn how to unsaddle and once again groom the horse yourself. If another question pops up during the week be sure and ask it at your next lesson. Go over in your head what you learned during the week. Visualize what you learned. Or if you took the lesson on your own horse, practice, visualize, practice, practice, practice, visualize and practice.

I received this from Jim Prather:

The Jesusita Fire in Santa Barbara , CA , last week caused these two to take shelter together. The fawn is 3 days old and the bobcat about 3 weeks. The fawn came from somewhere in the fire and the bobcat from Carpenteria. They immediately bonded and snuggled together under a desk in the Santa Barbara County Dispatch Office for several hours.

The bobcat kitten was rescued near Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ranch, where it was dehydrated and near death. They rescued the fawn during last week’s wildfire. Although wild animals, especially of separate species, are never placed together due to regulations, in this emergency situation, they had no choice. During the mayhem of the fire, they were forced to put animals anywhere they could, since they had run out of crates large enough for the fawn. The kitten ran to the fawn, and it was instant bonding.

Just wanted you all to know that it was windy in California yesterday too!

The guy from the Thoroughbred Friends blog was complaining that the hay was blowing away and and he had to put fly masks on the horses to keep their eyes free from debris. So it is not just here!

What a miserable day it was yesterday. Luckily I had help in the form of our newest barn volunteer, Chelsea. She helped us erect our windbreaks 2 weeks ago, and yesterday she was here to see them take a beating! Mother Nature sure does like to kick you in the ass when you try to slack off and not finish a job properly around here!

I purchased the windbreaks in mid September, I remember  ’cause there was free shipping before October 1st. It was free shipping because  apparently they came by dog sled or something, it took 2 months for them to arrive. Then of course we had to let them sit and acclimatize for a week or so, and of course by then it was cold out! Anyway way we will be finishing the anchoring process today, now they have moved over a couple of feet!

Ponies were not too happy yesterday either, they had to run to catch the hay before ti blew away. Luckily the wind will be blowing from the north just as briskly today so any hay that got away yesterday will be blown back this way today!! Hurrah!

Horses are highly sensitive  animals. Sure their eyes are large and on the sides of their heads for better sightings of harm coming their way, the ears are keenly attuned to hearing things from afar, but it is more than that. I know new riders and students that come to the barn think it is “hoki poki” new age crap when they are told the animals sense the riders emotions, I am sure they roll their eyes and say to themselves ” What kinds of hippies are these people believing in sixth sense?” But it is proven to us time and again, when the handler/rider is nervous , you have a different horse on your hands. It is not just the tenseness in your body when you are riding but it is the emotions  that the horse senses right from the first encounter, even before there is any physical interaction at all! We give off waves of emotions and the horse pick them all up! Humans give off emotions all the time, we as other humans usually just tune them out or chose to ignore, have you ever sat in a vehicle beside an angry person! You can just feel the intensity of emotion even if you are not a highly sensitive person, imagine how a horse feels when they are faced with something like that ( I don’t mean sitting in a car! That would be too squishy for them).

So we can take a perfectly calm quiet horse and turn them into quivering messes with just our emotions.  Anger, fright, nervous energy, calm, — horses are perfect mirrors of our psyche.

Of course some horses have learned to tune it all out, like Pepper. Pepper just goes to her happy place in her mind, she knows she is in a safe place and good hands, dispite what some of her handlers are telling her, and that is what makes her and so many like her perfect beginner horses.

That brings me to our latest acquisition!  Meg and her posse went out last weekend to look at this horse and test ride. The poor horse was a mess.  Like Charli at his previous barn,her head was  up, eyes white, jumpy at every noise, she was a quivering mess. Her surroundings were scaring the crap out of her and she was picking up the nerves of her handler and wondering why there was so much emotion in the air!

Meg saw through that, from her years of experience, and she listened to her own sixth sense that the horse was just a mess from her surroundings.

So now we have a new horse. She will be given time to adjust to the positive energy of the barn and surroundings and hopefully  ready for as a lesson horse in the new year.

When I used to board my horse Charli, I always found him to be highly nervous, which was unusual for him. In all our journeys together before then, nervousness was never a problem. At the boarding barn his head was high, his eyes were wide and white rimmed and he scuttled his butt around at every sound, and heaven forbid if a man in a hat should come near him! The barn owner warned me that he might have to put a “kick chain” on my horse, as Charli had struck out several times when he was standing in the stall ( which were standing stalls with the horses’ butts to the aisle.)He would dance when I tried to get on, and jig along until we were down the road. I couldn’t understand what the problem was, until  one evening I showed up for other then my usual morning visit.  They were bringing the horses in for the evening. The horses would come in from the field and 3 at a time they were “put” into the barn. There would be yelling and hollering, slapping and flapping, the horses at the front of the barn would be first, Charli was in the first stall. So in he would go and have to stand there terrified while the other horses were ushered in with great “fanfare” , down the barn. If the horse didn’t go into the right stall it would be hollered at and flapped at until it would go where it should. It was no wonder the poor horse was nervous! To this day he cowers at yelling and despises men in hats.

I quickly moved him to a new environment. No yelling or flapping at him, just a nice quiet calm atmosphere.

Which brings me to
How do we know if  the horse’s behavior is due to  the environment or is it his nature?

We say goodbye to a much beloved employee and hello to a great boarder!

Tank has become a friend and boarder instead of a hard working member of our team. She truly deserves her new less strenuous job as a trusted companion and saddle holder to Vicki D.! They have already started on their journey with a “controlled” trail ride around the property with her trail mates, Harley and TeyHa. Congrats Vicki!!

As many of you already know, Megan has been nominated for CHA Instructor of the Year. We were asked by CHA administration to provide photos of Megan (preferably teaching) for the awards banquet.

So, Cec took some excellent pictures of Megan doing what she does best, while looking smart, capable, and altogether fabulous.

These are not those pictures.