About two weeks before the big Vaught Family Natural Horsemanship, Jenny asked if I was going to ride in the demonstration. Whoops!\u00a0 I didn’t know that Nova and I were going to be in the demonstration.\u00a0 We had an assumption and non verbal communication.<\/p>\n
Now, it’s something to be practicing all along for “being in the Spotlight” someday as opposed to actually having a date for a demonstration.<\/p>\n
Nova and I started to practice and the holes we had were just a bit glaring.\u00a0 I had not practiced enough in riding bridleless.\u00a0 Our first practice session for riding bridleless in a real demonstration was dismal.\u00a0 I wasn’t really confident.\u00a0 But over the next two weeks, I managed to practice just a bit more and felt good about Nova stopping and slowing when I wanted.\u00a0\u00a0Nova is not a “see the long rail and accelerate” kind of a horse.\u00a0 That is what saves me from fear.\u00a0 She’ll canter down the long rail at the same rate of speed.\u00a0 She will stop. Stopping is a good feeling\u00a0when riding bridleless.\u00a0 You know what you get when you ride bridleless or play at liberty with your horse?\u00a0 The truth!<\/p>\n
We have a few glaring holes in running away from me when playing at liberty on the ground.\u00a0 This hole showed up in the real demonstration.\u00a0 I let her loose and she immediately took off.\u00a0 She looked really pretty as she\u00a0galloped around the arena a couple of times.\u00a0 Nova is good at this. She doesn’t get close to other horses.\u00a0 Finally\u00a0Nova ran to me. There’s nothing like that…to have your horse run to you during a demonstration in a strange arena!\u00a0<\/p>\n
Let’s see….we didn’t practice jumping over a barrel, but I got my nerve up during the demonstration and we jumped a few times over barrels.<\/p>\n
Nova and I are good at sidepassing over things..like barrels.\u00a0 We can sidepass over stuff in our sleep. We are sidepass experts!<\/p>\n
So, after I got on Nova during the demonstration, we went straight to the barrels, got into sidepass position\u00a0but whoa howdy,\u00a0I felt a big concrete wall.\u00a0 Nova’s body\u00a0told me front and center that she wasn’t going to sidepass over barrels.\u00a0 We\u00a0tried to sidepass the other direction and the concrete block was still there.<\/p>\n
Ok, I thought!\u00a0 We’ll go do something else and come back to sidepass over something.\u00a0 A little later I asked her to sidepass over a small jump.\u00a0 The concrete block was still there.\u00a0 I thought I would fool her.\u00a0 I asked her to step over the jump with her front legs and then asked her to sidepass.\u00a0 HA!\u00a0 I didn’t trick her. Instead she backed up and demolished the jump.\u00a0 I’m certain we were the center of attention then!<\/p>\n
I’ve tried to analyze this later.\u00a0 During a demonstration, there’s an excitement level from the crowd.\u00a0 It was a strange arena.\u00a0 We didn’t set foot in that arena until our demonstration started.\u00a0 So I bet Nova was telling me that she didn’t want her feet compromised.\u00a0 Nova wanted her feet unemcumbered by barrels if she decided to take off.\u00a0 Yep, that is it.<\/p>\n
We did some cool stuff while I was riding and finally she did sidepass over the barrels.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now, I felt it was time…<\/p>\n
I took off the bridle and we rode around the arena looking pretty cool.\u00a0 There was this tarp on the ground.\u00a0 Nova and I ride over tarps every now and then.\u00a0 We think tarps are very harmless.\u00a0 However, I don’t ever remember picking up a tarp while riding Nova.\u00a0 Some demon show-off button inside me told me to pick up the tarp.\u00a0 I picked it up with my carrot stick.\u00a0 Nova was calm, so I gathered up the tarp and placed it over her withers. Then we sidepassed over a row of cones. That was way cool!\u00a0 Walking around with that tarp cracking and rustling was the result of prior and proper preparation.<\/p>\n
We had a great time.\u00a0 Our maiden demonstration was a success!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
About two weeks before the big Vaught Family Natural Horsemanship, Jenny asked if I was going to ride in the demonstration. Whoops!\u00a0 I didn’t know that Nova and I were going to be in the demonstration.\u00a0 We had an assumption and non verbal communication. Now, it’s something to be practicing all along for “being in the Spotlight” someday as opposed to actually having a date for a demonstration. Nova and I started to practice and the holes we had were just a bit glaring.\u00a0 I had not practiced enough in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[10,4,5,9],"class_list":["post-139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nova","tag-jennifer-vaught","tag-missouri-fox-trotter","tag-nova-2","tag-susan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":142,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions\/142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}