This week...

As I mentioned in my previous post, I've been busy busy busy with my newest horsey iniciative lately - www.puntoecuestre.com, which is a Craigslist type classified ads site specifically for horse stuff in the Balearic Islands.  My friends Belén, Ivón, Virginia and I hope that it proves useful to folks here and if we get really lucky we might even make back what we've spent on it so far in publicity.  Apart from free ads, it has an equestrian map of the Balearics, a forum, a photo gallery, an equine contacts (veterinarians, farriers, etc...) page and of course a blog (featuring exclusive translations of the fabulous Lorraine Jennings' School Your Horse articles, no less!).

So needless to say I haven't had a lot of time for this blog, but I at least wanted to record our progress this week.  Especially since the farrier Xisco came yesterday and far from having to leave one hoof undone like the last time, actually complimented me on her training and was able to finish her trim in just about 30 minutes this time!  But I was able to see how much better she responds to me than to others, so I'll have to bribe some of the kids at the stable into working with her every now and then so she respects all humans and not just me.  Luckily they're pretty easy to convince.  Anyhow he says her hoovsies are superhealthy and fast-growing and that I don't need to worry about anything until I start riding her outside the stableyard pretty regularly.

And today we played with the big green Parelli ball again (videos are on the way!), as long as I have her on line she chases, rolls, kicks and trys to bite it although as soon as I unsnapped the lead rope she booked it towards the grassy side of the arena and completely lost interest.  But I'm trying to work on establishing a "roll it" cue and her topline is incredible when she chases the ball - nice and rounded.  I think it's just a question of practice...

Rewinding back in time, we had a couple of rainy days at the beginning of the week and I've been crazy at work besides, so didn't do much during the week, but on Sunday we had a absolutely cowboy-fugly longeing session.  I don't know if she could feel the rain coming or if it was equine PMS (oh, yeah, she's in heat AGAIN) or what, but she was way spooky and crazy - rearing, bucking and bolting all over the place for a long time before I finally got her halfway focussed and even then I was too scaredy to ride her.  Which I'm not sure if it's a good thing and a sign of my maturity and responsability or just a sign of me being a scaredy cat.  Jury's still out.

But last Saturday we had a lovely and solid groundwork session in the big arena and then I rode her in the roundpen and she was so very very good... we'll see if I'm so lucky tomorrow.  The good news is that the bad days are fewer and farther between, and the good days are becoming the rule instead of the exception.