Thursday, March 17, 2011

Externship–DAY 58–Trail ride, Trailer Loading, Analyzing by Jim Crew and Old Level 2 Kit Review

Today was one of the most peaceful and relaxing learning days for the externs it seems. We woke up and had fun challenging ourselves and each other with a soccer game (tournament against the apprentices and proteges tomorrow!) and then met up with Berin, we were assigned to saddle up and ride across the road to the play ground. So we saddled and made our way over where a student and Berin addressed a horse with issues with the trailer and specifically the hindquarter bar, this horse was blind in one eye and had been in a car accident before so he had a very logical reason to show issues. Berin showed quite an impressive bit of savvy and I learned a lot about how to make the most of a situation, how to be savvy with what you are doing and what you have. Sundance and another extern rode up to Pat’s barn to have our horses shoed by Jim Crew… Jim watched me ride and gave me some pointers, he said he was moving beautifully and told me to take my saddle off (which is a Parelli natural performer western saddle). He set it up on the fence and told me to come look, my saddle was wrong. It was out of balance and Sundance’s atrophy on one side was explained, he had taken a couple of falls over the years in that saddle and the saddle was whacked out of balance… the only thing I can do is to get a felt pad for now so he won’t feel the difference so strongly, and to get a new saddle. Looks like I will have to look harder for a ranch roper after all… We ran to the tack store to buy a felt pad during lunch then came back and met in the student lounge to watch the oldest Level 2 kit taught by Pat, our assignment was to take notes on it neatly like a summary… after that we did chores and had dinner, and a couple of us met back up again to watch some mastery DVD’s at the lounge, really enjoyed watching Pat work with some really advanced students! Tomorrow should be a fun day, not sure how it will go as we may have a soccer game at 3:00 pm? Oh well, it’s another adventure…

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