8/2 and 8/1

Yesturday I did stalls, rode and cleaned lucky's saddle, and then rode stormy, in that order. my ride on lucky went really well. we worked on side passing, turn on the haunches and leg yeilding, along with the normal wtc. stormys ride, not so great. she was wonderful by my eq when i jumped was just horrible. I have a bad habit of throwing myself over the fence, which throws stormy off balance which makes her knock the rails down. well i've been trying really hard to break it and i have done so well with not doing it. but yesturday....it just wasn't good. Nothing jumping wise yesturday was good.

Today, I had a lesson on Stormy. We worked wtc and did some jumping. i think we knocked...one rail down the whole lesson [compaired to yesturdays half dozen or so down] and she took them very nicely although she was tired. I focused on waiting for the fence and making as little movement as needed. It helped a whole bunch.

After the lesson, I hosed her off, brought her down to the ring and let her and buddy out in the ring together. Seeing as we are going to Stormy's first show exactly one week from today, Buddy is one of the three other horses going, and we want them getting along so she can be somewhat calmer. So we let them chill and graze together on whatever grass is at the edge of the ring. They seemed to really like each other. Stormy LOVES EVERYONE! And really, everyone. She can't imagining and horse or human not wanting to be friends with her. And Buddy is pretty chill, he himself is lower on the todem pole, but if he is higher, he'll just remind them if necessairy who is boss. So that was good. Then let Darlo, another horse hopefully going to the show, out with both of them. She didn't like Stormy as much cause Buddy is her new pasture mate ever since shes came to the barn [which was recently] so she was all like 'get away from my man' but stormy would go over and be all like 'i just want to be friends' haha anyways, no major problems.

We had a mini showmanship lesson in order to get ready for the show with everyone. So we had everyone in the ring practicing and everyone did fairly well. Stormy was doing great when I was practicing by myself, but when we went to actually do it in front of everyone, she was a total brat. but i still love her <33 showmanship is stupid anyways :p

Seeing as Stormy still isn't great at doing the whole standing and staying in her spot while on the trailer, we decided to trailer her over to Kathy's afterwards. So we load up, she loads on PERFECTLY, backs up with barely any problem and she stayed in her spot nicely. I decided I couldn't stand with her while everything was getting ready like normal just cause my nervous were going bonkers. But she did fine, was a bit confused why every the person trying to comfort her wasn't me. So we get there, shes soaked of course with sweat, i hose her off and tack her up. i decide i would try getting on without lunging her. Thankfully it wasn't a huge mistake. We barely had any problems, unlike last time! She was a bit hesitant walking down to the ring seeing as there is a bunch of big machinery on the way down that shes never seen before. I get in the ring and ask her to trot. Something happened last time on the far side of the ring, so she decided she wanted to shy majorly from it, and luckily i have a good seat, because she totally went sidewards from a trot. We walked her next to buddy which seemed to calm her down a lot. She didn't call out half as bad as she did last time. Last time she called out to...whoever atleast 20 times while i was on her, today I think she called out 2 maybe 3 times. No bucking at all, of course she only bucked last time while on the lunge. She did rear once, and it was a decent sized rear, not enough to get me off, but bigger than the one she did last time i was on her. I can't remember why she did it though. Uhm, she much more and much longer than last time. It gets annoying after awhile having to constantly walk your horse, knowing that they won't stand still and if you do ask them to, they'll throw a fit cause they are so keyed up. So yay for being a bit calmer. I hope it was because shes made a new friend in buddy and because shes been off the property before and remembered it wasn't that bad. I don't want it to be because i rode her before we left, cause i can't ride her before we leave for the show. Oh after i got off and we were just standing by the fence in the ring, we had an umbrella [because at the show a fair is going on at the same time [lucky me!] and of course there is going to be scary stuff there] so we twirled the umbrella and what not, i put it above her, she could have cared less, lets hope its the same in a week from now. Also played with a plastic bag and made noise, also didn't care. She did great. Luckily after we got off and put them into a temporary paddock at kathys, it started raining. Lucky because we werent on, unlucky because it started storming and cinny didn't feel confident or safe loading them up into the trailer with the ramp being slippery and lightening going off. So three of the horses aren't at home right now. But they were VERY content in the paddock eating hay. Anyways....hope everything goes well with the show.