Thursday, 23 April 2009
Dearest friends,
It came over me again-the need to show off.
Larry Whitesell is doing a clinic at Pine Dell Farm this three day weekend. I came to Pine Dell to ride Nova tonight. I got to ride with good friends, Hope and Edna.
I had just finished all my ground games and got on. In walks Dana-a gaited horse trainer who specializes in Paso Finos, and Larry Whitesell. They sat down in the viewing area and watched us.
After I realized that Larry Whitesell was watching me, my show-off tendancies took off. I really can’t help myself. Thankfully, I didn’t ask him what he thought of me and Nova and he didn’t volunteer to tell me. whew! I still have my dreams intact of doing splendid.
Nova and I spun around that arena doing warm up techniques that Larry teaches. We proceeded to fox trot and flat foot walk around that arena looking really cool…most of the time. I thought we were “HOT”!
We did side passing to and from the wall. We cantered diagonally across the arena. We did drop to a trot lead changes. We did our reining horse spin in slow motion. We stopped on a dime and backed beautifully.
Then I got off and set up barrels to jump over. Oh wait, Nova had not jumped over the barrels during our ground games. I got off and had her jump on-line. Good thing I didn’t jump her over the barrels as she would have launched me into Larry Whitesell’s lap.
After her jumps got good enough that I thought I could ride the jump, I did! I sceamed just a little bit and Hope said she saw a little daylight between me and the saddle. We did another jumping pass over the barrels and this time it was much smoother.
I have now jumped the big barrels on Nova and lived to tell about it!
In between all this a couple of participants in this weekend’s clinic showed up. They have my name and number so I can refer them to wondrous fox trotters like Nova and wondrous trainers in natural horsemanship!
I chatted with Dana about the Paso Fino breed. She stated that there are still breeders out there that have kept the wonderful foundation bloodlines and are not breeding for those tight bunched up Paso Finos. She started with Pasos back in the day before the show horse people started breeding those little tight sewing machine horses.
We had a fabulous night of showing off. Nova was a tired little showing-off horse when we got done tonight! I feel great!