Well, a recap since June is due! After that clinic I unfortunately didn’t get to ride a ton before heading to the Harry Whitney clinic in mid-August, but I snuck in a few rides around the area with friends, including one on my birthday as it fell on a Friday!
Kody went to training and is doing great with the cats now, and likewise back – they are no longer afraid of him. Asher had his labrum repair (5 anchors placed) in mid July and we went to visit VT together while he was homebound; he’s now out of the sling and doing most things again; his next phase will come in late October when he can start doing more above his head.

The Harry clinic had different timing this year, starting on a Wednesday and ending Sunday, so I was set to leave after work on Tues — then got asked to be a presenter on Tues down at our Danville facility for a meeting and changed my plans to leave Monday to Danville, with the horses, and leave from there after the meeting. I found a place to do overnight boarding for them that wasn’t too far from work and didn’t move me too far east for my trip to Floyd, and all was coming into place. I was just about to load the horses on the trailer (decided to take Prophecy as a buddy instead of leave him alone for a full week) when we got slammed with a crazy storm. It was a scary few moments, and I decided to let the horses loose back into the pasture and run for the truck just as the wind went wild. Doug called me a few minutes later to let me know there was no way I could leave, as he couldn’t even get home due very large trees blocking the roads. His 3rd route try to the house he finally made it back as folks were out with chainsaws before the FD could get out there. Needless to say, I did not make the work trip, and participated virtually and then headed to Floyd from home. Mind you this was also the first week of school, starting that Wednesday and we had our power knocked out from Monday until 6am Wednesday, and internet was not restored until Friday! A great start for them lol.

It was 5 solid days of working Breeze and myself – it was a long week – but also short! Jaime and I camped together and had a nice little set up between our rigs, pop-up tents and a coffee bar 🙂 Breeze and I had some great breakthroughs there with cantering and continued progress on his right rein, as well as keeping the brain with me while Prophecy called for him from their pen 🙄. I felt good with where we left our week and returned home to unfortunately have another bout of no ride time!
Here are some pics that Jaime snapped fore me. The last day we got to ride in the rain – which Tom caught a bunch of pics of us doing but I haven’t seen those yet. I was very happy to have the rain because I generally seemed to ride in the hottest part of the day every time! It would threaten to rain, but didn’t actually until the very last morning – we rode early to be able head back before the crummy traffic would hit.

The weekend after we returned it was time to pick up the mare! Skyler is leasing a QH/Haflinger cross, Daisy, to work with for the next year – maybe longer as her owner is in college in TX and can’t move her out there. Daisy has shifted through several barns/places over the last year, and has become trailer sour requiring folks to use a nose chain to load. So, I enlisted Jaime’s help with loading her on the homecoming date.
We began with just some ‘regular’ ground work in the round pen to get her in tune with working with Skyler and then began the loading process, with no agenda/time constraints to get it done. It took about an hour, but there was no nose chain used! Her “go-to move” to get away/avoid is to pop her head up and to the side, then rip the rope and run away; once she gets sideways on you, there was no holding her back. She managed to once that day, and it took having some good gloves on to hold that rope and counter her.

Daisy has lived with geldings before, and both mine have been with mares at some point, so I wasn’t expecting a huge hoop-la at home for introductions, and it did go fairly well. What I didn’t expect is that Prophecy would block her from Breeze; I figured he’d be telling Breeze she was his. In the end, Breeze and Daisy are best buds, but Breeze is over her, and Prophecy overall in charge. The next day I did work her getting back on the trailer before I unhooked, and it went MUCH smoother. She would more willingly walk on, but staying in for more than 30 seconds was/has been a challenge. I’ve hooked up every weekend I can and gotten her loading, and yesterday we did the first practice of her and Breeze on together and closing the door, as we get ready for another clinic weekend at Hope Horsemanship. I am definitely nervous about the two of them, as she is just not as willing to stand there like a 2H Straight-Load as all ours have done in the past together. She still has strong thoughts on turning her head hard to the outside and wanting to turn herself around. Hoping the drive is smooth and we can get some better communication going with her this weekend! When she gets distracted, she really doesn’t think about a human at all, very “flight mode” in her reactions, which with her tendency to pull the rope and run, has resulted in her jumping out of our small working area. She has easily cleared 3′ high and 2′ wide obstacles to do so! I don’t think Skyler will have any issue taking her through the levels in the shows, once we get her focused and working WITH a human better.

Skyler has diligently been doing ground work with Daisy when weather allows, and on occasion Prophecy for fun. She and I reached a consensus that he just doesn’t comfortable enough to continue down the path of being a riding horse and doesn’t need to be. She is hoping to get on bareback someday, but he has major sensitivity to the girth area being poked, and where your leg might hit on him, so still taking that slow.

We’ve also celebrated two birthdays in September and taken a minivacation for some family time thus far. I finally got to ride again too! This time I met Jaime about half way between us, a spot we did in the winter a year and half ago, on Saturday which we apparently picked the same day there was an ultra-run-race going on! So, no other horse traffic for us, but lots of people! It was a check in ride to see if we are ready to tackle our first LD, physically and mentally, in October. After 15 miles & 2400′ of elevation, we got a green light! This kind of ride gives me hope to make a real endurance horse out of him yet – he really was able to let things go, lead and follow, and be present even as we closed in on the trailers. Just a few months ago I had to spend time on foot to get his mind and slow us down to a walk to keep him engaged as we neared home. I am really seeing some ‘Fruits of our Labor’ over the past 3 years! Check out the video(s) from Jaime and see how far we’ve come since just May now. He’s a slow growing crop, but we’re in it for the long haul, and it appears he’s hitting a growth spurt 🙂

Well, that’s a wrap for now… This weekend we will be off to another Tom clinic, mainly for Daisy, but bringing Breeze along too as it never hurts to practice our skills 🙂