Balls Back

Occasionally (like really occasionally) I get a weekend away from the horses and it's awesome! This weekend was no exception. I headed up north with brother and SIL. We stayed with SIL's family (which is great, because I don't know them well) and got to experience all that is the El Dorado County Fair.

Including this cuddly goat who I bonded with

And baby piggies!!

And a cow!!

And a Rolling Stones vs Beatles cover band competition omg

The fair was amazing, it's totally what you imagine when you imagine a county fair. Lots of 4H animals, drinking, pig races, fried food, carnival games, drinking, ridiculous cover bands (including a Beatles vs Stones competition which was AMAZING), fried food, questionable political groups wanting to split California into states, drinking, pregnant teenagers, and fried food. I feel so freakishly sick after this weekend, yikes. Worth it! Even if I suffered in Crossfit this morning thinking I was going to hurl ugh. 

The highlight of the weekend was for sure the very last thing we did at the fair, which was play a stupid carnival game, you probably know the one. It was essentially beer pong- you took ping pong balls and threw them into cups of water, except that the cups were shaped like mini fish bowls and were very hard to get the balls into.

After watching person after person fail, my brother the champion beer pong player was feeling competitive. SIL got out some money, but the prize was a goldfish and they didn't want to take one home. I volunteered because a.) there's no fucking way he'll make it in, b.) I am so bored in my day to day life and have enough plants to overwater so a fish seems like the obvious choice for a new way to procrastinate writing my thesis, and c.) THERE'S NO FUCKING WAY HE'LL MAKE IT IN NO ONE HAS SO FAR.

Piggies

We paid 2 dollars and 50 cents for nine balls. We all chucked some in and of course, none went in. One did bounce off the little bowl and come straight back at brother who absolutely screams "BALLS BACK!! BALLS BACK!" and I ask whether he's going to toss it from behind his back. Down to our last ball, I gave it to brother so he could try one more time. 

And he fucking makes it.

He yells "YESSSS!!" and then "NOOOOOO!!" and looks super guilty as the lady goes "you made that?", grabs something out of a cooler and SHOVES a fish in a plastic ziplock back into his chest. That's the difference between winning a fish when you're 7 vs when you're 27.

Really man?

So I have a new fish. His name is Balls Back (pending something else because that was a joke but it seems to be sticking). Whatever, he looks kinda sickly so he'll probably die soon but in the mean time, he is enjoying the 5 gallon tank and some other stuff that was on sale at Petco. I'm actively trying not to kill him and SIL says he'll probably live a long and happy life just to spite me.

They've offered to take him on weekends and over holidays (split custody hahaha) because my brother is unreasonably attached to him now. The first thing he said when he came over last night is "um where is Balls Back? Can I see him?" and then "oh look at him! He's so cute!" SIL said they were discussing where the tank would go if they had to keep him for a week if I go away. At least I'm not the only crazy one. 

Obviously no baby horses were trained in the making of this weekend. And I have a horse show early Saturday morning before I book it up to Woodside (if I got in, my entries are kinda late). Two more rides until we do yet another Intro B. Definitely not moving up to Training 1, I don't know what I was thinking, maybe in July or August or next year. Or maybe not until he steers at the canter which will likely happen within the next ten years or so.

Steering is overrated when you're this cute!

Today though, I was able to ride. Once again we were not going to be able to ride in our glorious home arena because of incessant summer camps with children who don't understand that my horse paws like a mofo and they shouldn't go "WOW HE'S BIG" and walk directly in front of him.

So we went next door for the first time since the bolting incident a few posts ago. He was noticeably more nervous than before while we walked over, but luckily I ran into someone from our barn who kind of babysat us on our way over. 

Our normal arena wasn't open but the big indoor's footing was actually surprisingly decent so we headed in there.

Cute little bunnies!

TC is not allowed to whinny when I ride him (which he does in all arenas but the home arena), although there's not much I can do to stop it. Luckily he is ever the submissive horse and just me telling him "knock that off!" and putting him to work is enough to shut him up about half the time. However, he's now taken to figuring out what he CAN do that I won't get after him for.

So he now goes "eeeeeeeeee" while we ride. I can't really describe the sound, "eeee" is the closest thing I can type, but it's like he's about to whinny but stops on the first syllable and drags that out until he blows his nose.

It's so loud. But I put in both headphones and was able to ignore him. Dunno what the judge will think though hah.

Goat!!

The ride itself was great! He's not relaxed there, but he's rideable. I worked primarily on getting him to lower and lengthen his neck a bit at the trot, especially to the left because that side is just so damn hard. I'm noticing a very bad difference in my riding from left to right. To the right, I'm so much more relaxed, softer in my hand, and keep my inside shoulder back.

To the left, I anticipate having such a hard time that I make the hard time  even harder. I am less relaxed, I let my left hand get rigid, I let my right hand zip forward, and I'm twisting away from my right seat bone by pulling my problematic left shoulder back.

Realizing this was a somewhat decent wakeup call and he actually went better to the left by the end of my lesson with myself (I'm mean!) than he had in a while.

This is my dog, not from the fair, although with this face, she
totally belongs at the fair

We then did some walk-trot and trot-halt transitions. The walk trot transitions are getting better. First, ever since our last ride where I finally just kicked him HARD when he ignored me, he's much easier to actually get into the transition.

He is also figuring out the straightness too, I think that's the nice thing about going back and doing this again after Rico- I'm applying so much more to TC as a young horse that I learned when Rico was 4th level+. Like I probably wouldn't be so obsessive over straightness if I hadn't had a solid year with Rico obsessing over getting the walk to trot transition super straight on him.

The trot to halt is super good for his level too! He still walks into it a little and he isn't square ever, but he has been staying on the bit and walking straight out and picking up the trot straight afterward as well. That's pretty damn good given that our first few centerlines and halts were a bit like pony wrestling.

Sleepy little goats

We ended with some canter. The canter was EXCELLENT! Thanks, canter poles! Except that we now need to do the canter in short bursts due to the better quality.

The first time we cantered, he tried to run into it so I said no, then he hops into this gorgeous canter (like the kind of canter where you DON'T feel like you're about to fall over, wow), canters half a circle, then he walks and acts all proud of himself.

Um, I did not ask you to walk. Although yes, he does have excellent canter to walk transitions, mostly because I'm lazy and HATE installing them when the horse is ready for second so I install them as early as possible. But just because he knows how to do them does not mean that he gets to just do them whenever he wants.

So I had to get after him for that and then took the amount of cantering down a notch.

Mischievous goat!

The left lead is certainly more difficult than the right, likely due to the problems I mentioned earlier about his straightness and my propensity to make all bad things worse with my position and anticipation of him being bad. But the quality of both leads was much better. He's slowing down, he's a lot more uphill, and he is sort of on the bit. I think he needs to be more fit to really go on the bit at the canter so I'm going to be focusing on that this summer.

Overall I was super happy! We headed home around the front of the properties (near the road), where I discovered that all motor vehicles are now terrifying due to the motorcycles that we saw last time. So we worked on not running away when cars passed us.

When does he turn six again? Six is a good age. Eight is better but six beats four any day.

The only thing that the number four is good for is
being the number of pigs in this race

Piggies!