{"id":1729,"date":"2011-12-14T22:50:48","date_gmt":"2011-12-15T04:50:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/?p=1729"},"modified":"2011-12-15T23:00:13","modified_gmt":"2011-12-16T05:00:13","slug":"staggering-and-skipping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/staggering-and-skipping\/","title":{"rendered":"Staggering and Skipping"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lucky Star and I went over to Pine Dell<\/a> for our 2nd group lesson.\u00a0 Lucky Star learned how to skip and stagger. Well, really he learned how to stay calm and quiet while I skipped and then staggered around him.\u00a0 It’s a desensitizing thing.\u00a0 He got to have all the fun, watching a lunatic and then get petted.\u00a0 I was dressed in my sexy red Christmas Rueben fleece coat (50% off from Curvy Cowgirl<\/a>) and my Santa Claus hat.\u00a0 It had gotten up to a 60 degree grey day and the temperature had plummeted down to nearly 50 something when the lesson started.\u00a0 I started sweating.\u00a0 I won’t mention the panting.\u00a0 Soon, I had to take my Santa hat off. Lucky Star got to carry that on the saddle horn.<\/p>\n

Finally Karen was happy with my stagger and skipping skills and she let us play The Seven Games with an obstacle.\u00a0 Lucky Star chose an orange traffic barrel for his obstacle.\u00a0 I drug it in front of him and let him try to eat it.\u00a0 We maneuvered his front end and then his back end around it. We backed around the barrel.\u00a0 I even picked up the barrel and told him to move his hindquarters and then his forequarters.\u00a0 “Hey, no problem…if the barrel tells\u00a0 me to move a particular part, I will!”<\/p>\n

He wanted to sidepass over barrel, but Karen stopped him.\u00a0 She told him he might panic if this was the first ever thing he sidepassed over.\u00a0 She told him that he might get one of his feet stuck in the barrel and get a little nervous. So, Lucky Star picked a pole to sidepass over. We returned to the barrel and used it to play the squeeze game between the barrel, the wall and the pedestal.\u00a0 Oh my he was having a great time.<\/p>\n

Then Karen told me that I had to skip and stagger around him again.\u00a0 Then I had to take my beautiful coat off as the sweat really started.\u00a0 I flung the coat around while I staggered and skipped.\u00a0 He really didn’t like it too much when I flung it over his eyes, but he stayed calm and still.\u00a0 He didn’t care a whit that I flung it over his neck while I was hanging on to his mane in between my crazed antics.<\/p>\n

Say, did I ever tell you about the time when I was riding Velvet in a lesson with Jenny.\u00a0 The temperature had plummeted to less than 20 degrees.\u00a0 I was a frozen human when the lesson ended.\u00a0 We were all gathered around Jenny in a horse huddle when I dismounted.\u00a0 However, my legs were frozen and I staggered around for a moment and then fell underneath Velvet in a heap. Thanks to the early staggering desensitizing game in Velvet’s youth, she just ignored me.\u00a0 I just wanted to tell that story of how you might actually stagger in real life!<\/p>\n

Lucky Star had time to drag out a big ball and had me bounce it off his back for a minute or too.\u00a0 He wanted to impress Karen.\u00a0 He told me to roll it under his belly. Sadly, Karen missed that part.\u00a0 She was actually paying attention to another horse and rider team in the group lesson.<\/p>\n

Karen and the other lesson people missed my mounting step dismount too.\u00a0 I was having Lucky Star practice coming to get me on the\u00a0 mounting block.\u00a0 Sadly, he came a little close, I got a little off balance\u00a0 and chose to fly off the mounting block steps.\u00a0 Luckily, I didn’t have me beautiful red coat on when I dove into the arena dirt!\u00a0 Lucky Star was carrying my coat for me then.\u00a0 Lucky Star wasn’t too interested in the fact that I dove into the arena dirt either.\u00a0 He just stood there.\u00a0 People without horses just don’t have this kind of adventure!\u00a0 What they are missing!!!<\/p>\n

Lucky Star had to circle around me at a gait faster than a walk and maintain it.\u00a0 Since he doesn’t see the point in keeping up any kind of speed, it was difficult to convince him to keep going. But we managed and got some praise. We were both exhausted at the end of the lesson.<\/p>\n

Karen told Lucky Star that he is going to make someone a wonderful horse with his confidence and calmness.<\/p>\n

Lucky Star is owned by Teresa and Junior Osborn<\/a>.\u00a0 He might be for sale after the Missouri Fox Trotter World Celebration in September.<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lucky Star and I went over to Pine Dell for our 2nd group lesson.\u00a0 Lucky Star learned how to skip and stagger. Well, really he learned how to stay calm and quiet while I skipped and then staggered around him.\u00a0 It’s a desensitizing thing.\u00a0 He got to have all the fun, watching a lunatic and then get petted.\u00a0 I was dressed in my sexy red Christmas Rueben fleece coat (50% off from Curvy Cowgirl) and my Santa Claus hat.\u00a0 It had gotten up to a 60 degree grey day and…<\/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":[89,125],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-country-franks-lucky-star","category-missouri-fox-trotter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1729","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=1729"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1731,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1729\/revisions\/1731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}