Making Adjustments

Adding a kitten to the household has created a bit of a disruption in the status quo.

 Chester (our other cat) is doing surprisingly well with Willow- no hissing or growling, just keeping a watchful distance.

d'Arcy didn't even know she was in the house for about 24 hours. He's is showing a mild curiosity but not not fixated like he has been in the past.

Guinness is experiencing the most disruption. His nose is a little out of joint over the attention I've been giving Willow. Jealousy + Curiosity + no conception of his size= chaos. However, he's a smart dog and is figuring out that barking or charging the kitten is not acceptable. The kitten is learning that if she hisses he slams on the brakes, whines and backs off. She's getting much less worried about him. Today they even touched noses. I am positive that in a few days they will be doing just fine.

Guinness: But, but I just want to sniff her. Why can't I sniff her? 

 Willow, of all of us,  is adjusting just fine. Everywhere I go I am followed by a large dog and a wee kitten. Also, typing of blog posts is much trickier.

I mean can you even? I don't think so.

Remember when I said I had a lesson scheduled for today? Well it was cancelled because another rider had to cancel (a lost shoe). Shanea needs a certain number to make it viable. Which I understand but I was still disappointed. I had to decide what to do - I didn't want to fall into drilling her so I made some coffee and thought about what to do. I really really want to hit the trails in my woods but I want a companion the first few times so I need someone on Irish.

I decided to set up some poles to play with:

The red line is a landscape tie, the middle is  a configuration of poles (the two parallel to B were 2 trot strides apart) and the '+' are two jump standards. 

It was a very windy day and the wind was cold. I guess summer is over. I started with Carmen on the ground.

Suspicious mare is suspicious

I wanted to play with side passing over the landscape tie- starting in hand. It's funny- Carmen side passes very well in hand but as soon as I took her to the tie she struggled. I kept it slow and simple with lots of rewards. She finally figured it out and I gave lots of praise. Other wise we went up and down the ring playing with our ground work.

I then mounted and we began to play. The wind picked up and the trees were blowing a lot. As I would expect Carmen became tense with all the action. At one point there was a little dust devil in the ring. Carmen was not impressed. I was so happy that I had set up the course because it gave us something to focus on. I played with all sorts of patterns at walk, trot and canter. One exercise that was fun was using the parallel poles to set up a counter canter.  The off-set poles were great for practicing diagonals.

We practiced side passing without and then with the tie. We actually managed to do it a few times too.

In the end we had some really nice work and it was all about making adjustments. I think if I hadn't had these obstacles it would have been a lot easier for Carmen to get fixated on the 'spooky things' but it's hard to do that with 'eek who put this pole here?'

I am hoping I can talk Ed into making me a bull and I need to find some barrels......

Sunshine and Kittens- Literally

The weather has been sunny all week- despite forecasts of rain. This weekend it was not only sunny but warm.

It's been fun riding Carmen since the clinic. We've been working on the slow and steady and it's paying off. Not that she hasn't been jazzed- she has but we work through it and get to a good place. I have a lesson with Shanea on Sunday and I'm really looking forward to it.

But in other exciting news there is a new addition to Oakfield Farm.

I had to accept that Martin was not going to come home. It took me a while because I loved that cat. He had so much personality. However, when the local shelter posted that they had kittens I could not resist. Ed and I went and picked out this cutie:

where am I?

We settled on the name Willow for her and it suits her. 

She's a snuggle bug

Guinness is adjusting to not being the 'baby' anymore. He's learning that he cannot bark at the new addition. I have to say that Willow is pretty feisty and, while cautious, she's not going to take any guff off anyone. 

I think that you can see that she has a bit of sass in her. 

I can write blog post?