Today was such a great day! Woke up to a normal morning, very windy today! We met at 8:30 am to do an exercise to work on our group morale (which is AMAZING, who knew such a diverse group could get along so well?) and get our blood pumping! Quite a funny little game brought up by our leader of the Extern and the Interns... not sure what it is called? All I know is that we all were running, falling in the sand and laughing our heads off! Interesting to see who in the group are the truly competitive souls?!
The externs were sent to some time to study for our testing this afternoon and to work with our horses... I studied for a second, then my extroversion got the best of me and I had to go get a little nosey and see what everyone else was doing and then went and cleaned Sundance up. Florida is getting the most rain it has gotten in MONTHS, and he externs and interns horses stay in metal pens without bedding... to say the least, it is muddy! Sundance's white leg was black, and so was other parts of him! So I cleaned him up a bit and saddled him up. We went out to play on the 45 foot line and oh my goodness! I put my sneaky little trouble making "mask" on, like Jim Carry, and we had MORE impulsion and the FUNNIEST, noisiest and silliest horse you have ever seen at the end of a line! At the end of our circling game, I was laughing so hard I was crying, Sundance had the happiest, most curious goofy look on his face and I saw quite a few giggles around me from the surrounding game players both in boots and horse shoes!
We started our horsemanship session with Berin in the Performance Arena, 2 hours of Follow the Rail at the walk and trot. What an awesome wake up call! It's amazing what your horse can teach you with that pattern, especially in a HUGE HUGE performance arena like that with 20 more horses there in with you adding to the energy! Sundance did very well with the following the rail, but I did find that we need to find more rhythm an relaxation within the trot, he tends to go the speeds he wishes when he is asked to trot. He goes from a very smooth relaxed slow jog, almost walk, to a big old warmblood trot... we need to find some rhythm there! Both of us were pushed a bit but we both seemed to enjoy the experience and seemed both of us learned from it!
We untacked and made our way to a nice lunch then met Nate Bowers and took our written driving harness test, GREAT stuff to learn! Great stuff to know! We joined Nate at the Carriage House, and went over all of the parts, all you need to know about safety in harnessing and how to harness them. I took PAGES of notes in my little pocket notebook, it was a BLAST to learn all of it! I am so excited about getting into driving, I really enjoy it. I was able to harness and harness one of the horses, the mare, which one is it of the two? Of Thunder and Lighting? One is a mare and the other is a gelding. They are Belgian Brabants! Blue roan rare beauties, they are VERY different looking and beyond beautiful creatures... they are definitely something to be respected.
A couple of students and I went out to El Toreos to celebrate my room mate, Zoe Thorrez's birthday, she was sang to, got a pie in the face and got a crazy cute Mexican hat put on her head! She definitley handled it all in stride, much better than I would! Afterwards we went to Cold Stone Creamery and enjoyed some ice cream.
I got my laptop in, a Toshiba, which I am writing on now for you! I am sitting here in the Lodge, quiet and dimly lit in my Parelli jacket, very cosy. I am going over my presentation for Friday, which I am excited about. It is already written out, now I have to transfer it here to this computer and organise it a bit! Need to get that done tonight, not sure if I can get it all done though... it's already 10:00 pm, I usually get to bed at this time and get up around 5:30 in the morning. Maybe I can work on it a good bit tomorrow! Wish me luck, it will be my first long presentation in a class room. I've done plenty with horses at demos and play days for long lengths but not in the class room. I think I will do fine once I get settled with the feel of the stage, I plan on getting the group involved anyway! I will share my presentation written here on my blog after my presentation on Friday, don't want to spoil any surprises! Hey, it looks like we will be attending and participating in the 1 star Instructor Course next week! What fun! Rumor is that it is one of the last ones taught by Pat and Linda, hmm? Hope not, but it will be a great opportunity for us nonetheless!
I have no idea as to what we are doing tomorrow, we are supposed to meet at the Foundation Station Intern Tack Room at 8:30 am to get our assignments for the day. Excited with this schedule, you NEVER know what you are going to do! "My Momma always said life was like a box of chocolates, you NEVER know what you're gonna get!" I love it.
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