January 18, 2015: Planning Ahead

Plan ahead – this sounds like a redundancy. This dispatch should just be entitled “Planning” because while you can plan ahead, you can’t plan behind. But, this is exactly what I did today. Some days, in dealing with horses and people, I trod really carefully, planning-wise. This is because I’m at hart, an incredibly anxious person. This was one of those days when the anxiety barometer was perhaps a bit higher than usual, maybe because yesterday’s reception activities went well into the evening.

I got up, cleaned the horse pen, ate my oatmeal, and then worked for an hour on If Wishes were Horses. I’ve been making headway in revising the section I’m now working on. I am trying to be more positive about my former relations with Ben and Virginia Crawford, who were Raudi and Siggi’s breeder. I just don’t want to sound like a sour grapes kind of gal.

After, I opted to take Raudi for a trail ride. I left at 12:30. Dick and his friend Keith, who is a physical therapist, were scheduled to come over here at 1 p.m. I knew that Dick would be late because he always is. As it turns out, Keith was a no show – the latter was at the Sindorf Center, working on teaching his shire to pull a cart. In addition, Vickie said that she’d be riding Hunar over to our place.

I got back home at 2:45. Dick showed up a few minute later. And Vickie showed up a half-hour after Dick.

Pete gave Dick a saddle fit assessment. Then he took off with him on a trail ride. I had originally planned to follow on foot, and work with Hrimmi on the trail. (She’s been stopping lately, and I wanted to work on walk on with her.) However, I instead decided to do agility work with Vickie and Hunar. In the process of moving agility obstacle into the arena, Raudi walked out of the gate and began racing around the property. Then Hrimmi, who had been improperly tied, joined her. The two raced around the yard together. I could envision poor Signy, Hrimmi’s dam, rolling around in her grave. I finally caught and tied both up.

I resumed setting up agility equipment. This included the hula hoop (with poles on the sides) the narrow thing, the pole, the streamer walk through minus the streamers, the ground tarp, the tarp with lead rope attached (for pulling) the manure bucket weave, the cone weave, and the ball kick.

I went first with Raudi. Most of the time, our lead rope had a loose line on it. And most of the time we moved slowly and with little effort or jerkiness. I was at that point most proud of the fact that Raudi had no problem with my pulling on a tarp alongside her.

Hunar and Vickie went next. Vickie’s line was often short and she often failed to look where she was going. And Hunar didn’t like it when the tarp touched his legs or feet. Vickie and I agreed that what Hunar lacked was experience.

I then got Raudi out, us doing liberty work, me working her with no lead. She did wonderfully, stopping each and every time I asked. It had to have been clear to Vickie that Raudi and I have an incredible on-ground rapport with one another. I was proud of us both.

As we were finishing up, Dick and Pete reappeared with Jokla and Tinni. They both said that they had good rides. I knew that Tinni was happier, having gotten a break from having to deal with ponying Hrimmi.

We then tended to all the animals; blanketed, fed, and watered Hunar, Jokla, and Tinni.

I had planned the day so that I wouldn’t have to ride with Dick or Vickie. I’m going to need to get out of my very comfortable comfort zone and just do this. Right now the area trails are reputed to be really good, so I suspect that an opportunity to ride with one or the other is soon going to materialize.

Back at home, while drinking tea, we all talked about doing a longer ride, perhaps next weekend. We’ll see. I’m glad to have gotten through the day. I feel like I expended unnecessary energy in keeping to my avoidance-based plan.

Next: 19. 1/19/15: Yet another Bright and Shining Star