Well, here I am again! It's been a busy summer and now we're getting into Fall, or as I like to call it, Bouncing Weather. It's been getting cooler and breezy and I love it! It makes me frisky and I can't help bouncing sometimes.
As you can see from the picture, my mom has been riding me in a Western saddle! Not all the time, not even most of the time, but sometimes she puts it on me and we ride like that. It's nice. I like a change, after all, and it's a pretty comfy saddle. It used to be my friend Indy's. She lives next door to me. But it didn't fit her right and her mom didn't like it so she and my mom talked about it, and my mom tried it on me and Sparky and it fit both of us so now it's ours. It's very pretty and it came with a nice breastplate too that I'm not wearing in this picture. My mom took my noseband off my bridle so I'd look more Western, and she bought a set of rope reins just like my regular ones but with a long piece on the end that makes them Western reins. So now I get to be a Western pony like a lot of my friends.
My mom has been riding Sparky a lot lately too and she usually rides him with the Western saddle. He looks really cute in it too.
I don't really like it when my mom rides him. It makes me kind of mad. I love my brother and I know he likes to go riding too but she is MY mom and it's not fair that she's not paying attention to me all the time that she's here. Still, I try to be good about it and not make too much of a fuss. Sometimes me and Indy talk about it. Her mom went and got another horse and Indy's not very happy about that. He's just a colt really, so he needs all kinds of training and stuff, so her mom has been spending lots of time with him. Indy says she's going to kick him good as soon as she gets the chance. I can't really blame her but I'd never kick Sparky. I love him and besides, it's not his fault. He didn't make my mom ride him, after all.
Grace says we both need to calm down. Grace is the mare on the other side of me. She's really nice. I like both her and Indy but they're lots different. Grace is very sweet and calm. She's a lot like Sparky, always very good and polite to everyone. Indy is more like me. She gets mad easy and has fussy days. But I like them both. It's nice to have mares on both sides.
Anyway, Grace thinks it's silly that we get mad at our moms working with other horses. She says we should just relax and enjoy not working. Grace likes to work, and she loves to go out with her mom, but she also doesn't mind if her mom rides her brother Rio, or if she pays attention to him. She says it doesn't mean her mom doesn't love her best. I asked her how she knows that and she said she just does. I guess I know it too but it just seems wrong for my mom to spend time with other horses, even Sparky.
Today though, Sparky's Mom came out with my mom so I had her all to myself. She cleaned my stall and brushed me and then she put the Western saddle on me. While she was saddling me, she asked me which horse I was going to be today. She says that sometimes. She says she can never tell which horse is going to come out of the stall. At first I didn't know what she meant. After all, I'm the only horse who lives in that stall. But she means that sometimes I'm very frisky and bouncy, and other times I'm lazy and poky, and she never knows which way I'm going to be.
A couple of days ago, she came out kind of late and put the Western saddle on me and took me out into the dressage arena. I was frisky. It was getting close to dark time, and it was cool and I just wanted to bounce. I couldn't help it. My mom gets mad at me sometimes when I'm like that. She tells me that if I'd just go forward the way she's asking me to, I'd be able to get a lot more of my energy out but I just can't seem to help myself. Instead of trotting out nice and briskly, I get all bunched up and start fussing, and trying to go up and down instead of forward. I'm not bucking, and I'm not rearing, or crow-hopping, or anything like that. I'm just bouncing. But my mom doesn't like it.
This particular day, she asked me to trot and I just tried to take off bouncing down the arena, tucking my head like I was going to buck and getting pretty silly, I have to admit. She circled me and asked again, and I trotted a little bit and then got silly some more. My mom has a lot of patience with me and she spent some time trying to get me settled down. She'll push me forward and give me plenty of rein so I don't feel like I'm being held in, but she won't let me bounce. Sometimes I settle down after a little bit but that time I just couldn't and she finally got fed up and brought me into the Round Pen where she got back on me and made me trot around the dumb old Round Pen for about forever until I decided to be a Good Girl. Then she brought me back out to the dressage arena and made me trot all over it like a Good Girl.
By that time, I was getting tired so I Behaved myself and we ended up having a nice ride. She brought me out on the road to take a Poop Loop to cool off and we got up by Indian's barn when I noticed it was suddenly getting very dark.
Well, I don't like the dark. It's scary. You can't see so well, and there are funny noises, and I'm not used to being out of my nice, cozy stall in the dark. Sometimes my mom puts me in the Round Pen while she cleans and it gets dark while I'm in there and it makes me really nervous. I whinny for her and she comes to get me and has to talk to me and tell me it's okay because it just makes me feel funny. So when we were out and riding and it was dark and I wasn't anywhere near my stall, I got pretty scared and I just stopped and refused to keep going.
My mom kept urging me on, and she told me that if I'd just go, I'd get back to my stall and be okay. I kind of knew that but I was still nervous. I felt sort of safe where I was because nothing was making any noise or anything, but if I moved I thought it might be scary so I just stayed there. Finally my mom got off and led me home. I still wasn't too sure about it but I did feel better with her near me like that, and petting me. I was sure glad to get back to my stall.
Sparky doesn't mind the dark at all. He lives right out there in the pasture with no stall or anything and he walks around in the dark all the time out there. He says it's safe and that you can see just fine but it makes me feel funny anyway. I'm just not used to it.
Today, we just rode in the dressage arena for a while. There was another horse there with a girl riding him. They were doing dressage. I could tell because sometimes they went sideways. Dressage riding has a lot of that in it. I know how to go sideways. My mom asks me to sometimes when we do dressage. I can do a shoulder-in and a leg yield and those are both sideways things. Sometimes I go sideways even when my mom isn't asking me to, just because I like to. It's good practice.
We were riding Western today though so we didn't do a lot of sideways stuff. By and by, Sparky and his mom came in. I was a little frisky and I got to canter a little bit when my mom asked me to trot and I cantered instead. She let me and that was nice but I got my feet a little tangled up and ended up trotting on one end and cantering on the other. That happens sometimes. My mom says my legs are too long but I don't think they are. If they were shorter, I wouldn't be able to reach the ground.
I'm learning how to Neck Rein. That's how Western horses steer. English horses Direct Rein. That means when your mom wants you to go to the right, she pulls on the right rein. Or if she wants you to go to the left, she pulls on the left rein. Western horses do it differently. It's kind of tricky. If she wants you to go to the right, she lays the left rein against your neck and you're supposed to turn away from it. Or the opposite if you're turning left. My mom helps me by gently touching my mouth with a Direct Rein while she's giving me the signal with the Neck Rein. It helps me remember what I'm supposed to do. I'm getting better at it and Sparky says that he's learning too. It's fun to learn new things.
So that's what we've been doing lately. Pretty soon I'll know how to do everything. That will be pretty neat. Then I'll be like Kia. She knew a lot. But in the meantime, I'll have fun learning.
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