Bah Humbug

I think G-Licious needs a few days off; seems that she's starting to get bored. I have to constantly try and "wake her up" during schooling, it's like she's sleeping or in la-la-land! I think I may have to decrease her magnesium intake, lol. It's having too good of an affect on her, haha!

We're still having a rough time with the correct lead at the canter on her hard side. I'll admit, I was way too frustrated the other day, and she probably was too. The heat certainly doesn't help, no matter how early I get out there. It's like she was too tired to really pick it up and then hold it when she would get it. Poor girl needs a break. I think I'll go and turn her out tomorrow, if the arena is open. Our barn is under construction (getting our large arena covered, wooo hoo!) so we are limited on turnout and work space. It'll be worth it in the long run though! I think giving her a 3 day weekend with one 15-20min turnout to run around will help make her feel better instead of just work-work-work every other day. She's still young and I want her mind kept as fresh as possible.

No matter what, I'm still so proud of her! Even the Western trainer at my barn recently had some very nice things to say about her. It's too bad she can't be registered PB with either ApHC or APHA; she'd kick butt in the PB shows!

Some pictures hubby took yesterday:

Finally-Update!

I'm getting really bad about not posting updates here. Not like we have a ton of followers anyway, but still. I need to make sure I'm logging our progress.

And progress we have been making!

She is just fantastic. I don't know how else to describe it. She has her naughty moments, but they're getting less and less with each schooling session. She has maybe one moment a session. We'd been recently having a hard time picking up the correct lead at the canter to her hard side (going right), but I finally figured out how to get her on the correct lead almost every time. Simple and basic... so of course I didn't think of it right away, hahaha! I have to turn her head to the outside slightly and REALLY urge her into the canter with my outside leg to really push her into it with my leg and hip and WHALA. She picks it up. Figures. Before I was doing everything BUT turning her head slightly to the left. Made a huge difference. So we're going to keep doing that and slowly even her head out and then get her to slightly stick her nose in to the inside and turn/bend while being round when we do circles.

Her trot is just awesome, I can't ask for anything better. We do our walk to trot to walk to trot to halt perfectly (IMO) and just have to work on our canter transitions. We'll get there, slowly but surely.

I am hoping to take her to a show in a few weeks.  Not enter her into anything, but to ride her around the exercise areas. I don't have the proper attire for showing at the moment so we're just going to get her used to being in a show atmosphere. She's been to a show before, but that was 3 years ago as a yearling. I'm going to the show anyway as a photographer for a friend (Gertie's stall neighbor and boyfriend's owner) so might as well bring Gertie along if there is room. OH YEAH! She turned 4 two weeks ago!! That was a big deal.

Anyway, I'm really proud of her. Now, I'm doing better about keeping my toes in and have been working on keeping my shoulders back... but UGH yeah still gross looking to me. I need to consciously work on it a lot harder because it really bugs me. I'm going to over-exaggerate sticking my boobs out for now on...when I remember. That's the problem, remembering!