This morning I woke up early and completed my horse chores early since my family was coming in at 7:00 am to say goodbye before they left, it felt good to get stuff done early! Sundance was somewhat cleaner than usual and happy to see me, the morning was gorgeous and my family pulled in right on time just as I had gotten finished. They brought me some breakfast so I wouldn’t have to go up to the lodge and I had a great time with them, I am so very thankful for such a wonderful family… I am truly blessed that we are so close and we love each other so much!
After my family left for sweet little North Carolina, we met up at the Intern tack room with Berin and talked about our day. We have 3 new Interns in our group so we played a new and hilarious round of the name game… our regular backwards football game was changed, it’s now deflated ball deep sand soccer! I was a lot of fun and regardless of the cold and wind, all of us ended up very sweaty and quite out of breath. Once our game was over we all gathered our horses, groomed, tacked and warmed up. I chose to warm up at liberty in one of the 50 foot round pen, Sundance and I are really focusing on subtlety within our phases right now, using mostly my energy, my facial expressions and my shoulders to communicate with him… I learned JUST how much one shoulder movement can make to a horse, if I was blocking him with my shoulder in sideways mirroring he could not do it, but once I opened it up he did it beautifully and all I had to do is open up my shoulder and look at him and he would do it. I am playing with my energy with my drive, draw and send also. I noticed just how much I paid attention to his bosy and energy, how much I noticed his changes and his queues and how small and subtle I made mine during my liberty sessions, it made me think… Why don’t I do all of this online just as much? It made me think of Pat’s quote “ Play Online as if you were at Liberty and at Liberty as if you were Online'” Hmmm…. why didn’t I think of that and apply that before? Sundance taught me a lot today, he also gave me lots of giggles and smiles, how blessed can I get?
We met with Berin in the performance arena and discussed about the importance and use of the change of direction at the canter on the 45 foot line. He demonstrated with a horse then had us separate and work on it individually as he watched over and offered help as it was needed. That lasted until 12:40 pm, I jumped on and rode for a couple of minutes as lunch is from 1:00 to 2:00 pm. My rotation this afternoon was teaching, we met up with the instructors and assessors of the current fast track course in the instructors room, discussed quite a few things. I am in group B, so all 4 of us went to work with all of the instructors who were helping out with testing… we transferred items back and forth, got water, helped students and zipped up zip ties for the tests. We finished at 10 after 6 and ran and ate some great chicken, which after I came back here to the Foundation Station to blanket Fabio, braid him up and feed. I tried my best to get chores done early so I can write a long update for you and work on a current project… so here I go!
We have no idea as to what we are to be doing tomorrow, everyday is an unknown adventure… you never ever know what you are going to do! That’s why you are hanging here with me, I appreciate it. We will talk soon, thanks for the pleasure of being able to speak to you.
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