Not Trying

 Well it's been a bit busy here on the farm. 

First of all- the baby swallows survived and left the nest.  I really enjoyed watching the parents teaching them to catch bugs in the air. It was hilarious and adorable all the same time. Now it looks like the parents are working on batch #2. 

In other  news we now have our year's supply of hay in the barn. As always, it was a hard grind and I have hay stashed everywhere. But it also feels so good once it's all in there. And the barn smells heavenly. Our second batch was delayed because of weather so it's a bit more dried out then I like but I figure feeding that over the summer will be fine. The chickens are having a grand time climbing the hay. Ed called me at work one day to tell me that he was in the barn stacking when he heard a loud protest. He took down some hay to find that one of them had climbed into a crevice and was blocked in. After that she kept yelling at him. Thank heavens she protested otherwise we'd have never known she was there until we found her carcass half-way through winter! I have Ed convinced to demolish our little shed (that's dilapidated anyway) and build a new, bigger shed to store more hay. 

One supervisor and one quality control officer

Dealing with weather and hay meant that I was not able to ride as much as I wanted. Despite that Carmen has been pretty good overall. Definitely more energy. Interestingly enough that she will threaten to spin/bolt etc but has not followed through. I suspect it's because I'm not backing off but riding forward. 

The other day I was riding her by myself and caught myself thinking 'I wish that I could hack her alone'.  I then realized that hope is not a strategy and I started thinking more about it. I realized that Carmen was never going to send me a memo: 

Dear Servant, 

I wanted to let you know that I am ready to be ridden by myself in the wild. Please let me know your response at your earliest convenience.  

        Yours Truly, Carmen

I realized that I had done a number of things to help her learn about this: hacking out leading and following, learning to deal with spooky things etc. So after a good ride, I put her rope halter on over the bridle and led her down the path. Halfway through I tied the lead so it wouldn't dangle and asked her to line up. We walked around and then headed back. I hopped off before the end and led her home. I plan to do more of this- taking my cue from her behaviour in the ring. I want to have her look at the hack and the relaxing end to a schooling. 

 

Might we actually be getting somewhere?