I didn’t update quite as soon as I was hoping to, but I have gotten a few of the big things done that I need to get done to survive this winter.  First off, I moved into an apartment that will be my home for the winter.  Having a home is very important to me and this apartment is an ideal Emily home.  I have a one room apartment in a barn.  It is cozy… but lovely.  My only sink is my kitchen sink which is located about four feet from my kitchen table/desk and a bit closer to my bed which is also my couch.  Luckily I now have an actual bed to sleep in rather than the couch I slept on my first week here.  Thank you lovely, amazing landlords!! My kitchen counter has just enough room for my hot plate (a double one at that!), my George forman, my dish drainer, my newly acquired waffle iron, and the coffee pot that lives in the apartment. From the kitchen/living room/ office/ bedroom, you transition smoothly into the hallway that leads to the bathroom.  The hallway contains the microwave table/open food storage area which is across from the filing cabinet chest of drawers and the wardrobe.  The bathroom is separated from the hallway by a nice curtain. This beautiful burgundy curtain is exactly knee high when I am sitting on the loo.   The bathroom also contains the nicest shower stall I have ever seen in a barn as well as nice shelves to store everything bathroom related that I own. 

I do like to believe that I live alone in my new apartment, but that is a bit of a lie.  A few days after I moved in I saw something dark and little scurry out of the way when I walked.  My first thought was of course of roaches so I followed the critter to see what it was… as it hopped I realized that I did not have a roach problem at all, rather I had a healthy population of crickets.  I decided not to kill them, but to keep them as pets.  They remind me of the field station that I worked at through grad school.

 I briefly also had another, less welcome pet.  I was in my bathroom early one morning and I picked up my cleanest pair of jeans off of the floor to get dressed and I saw something scurry out from under my pants!  I typically do not like to see things run out from under my pants, but I held myself together to confront this critter who I assumed was a mouse.  Upon closer inspection, after I had chased it under the shelving in my bathroom, I realized that it was actually a little, adorable vole!  It was a really cold day outside, so I was going to allow the vole to stay in my bathroom for the night and catch him and turn him outside in the morning.  Sadly the vole did not agree with these terms.  When I saw him wandering into my kitchen/living room/ bedroom/ office, I decided it was time for him to leave… NOW!  So, I got a cup to catch him with.  Sadly he outwitted me in my first try to capture him, and he ran under the heavy mat just inside my front door.  I stepped onto the mat, so I could lift it up and capture him.  As I lifted the mat, I shifted my weight.  Sadly, the little vole had the bad timing of running deeper under the mat into squish zone as I shifted my weight.  In this unfortunate encounter I took three of my cricket friends and my newly acquired vole out of household drama permanently.  I was very distraught that I could acquire new pets and loose so many of them within such a short period of time through unintentional means. 

With this first big accomplishment done, next on my list was to find a job.  I filled out applications at a number of restaurants.  Lets me rephrase… I applied to a ton of restaurants, some great and some not so great, but I have yet to even get a phone call from any of them.  Luckily I also saw a position listed for a night audit position at a hotel.  I figured if I worked night a few days a week, then I could have all day every day for the rest of the week to ride horses, so with some reservations I applied.  As I filled out my application, I was scheduled for an interview because I seemed like a people person.  The day after my interview I was called back and told I was hired if I wanted the job. So, I have now been in training for two days!  After my second day of training, I was invited to the hotel’s Christmas party (or told that I should come if I like to eat… so obviously I was going to go). At the party I got to meet all of my new coworkers.  They all seem really amazing, but I wish I could speak Spanish so I could talk with some of the great girls that work there.  Anyway, after eating some amazing Mexican food, we all took part in a gift exchange provided by the management.  Somehow I left the party with a waffle iron, a turkey, a plate of leftover Mexican food, and guilt of being the new girl who somehow ended up at the Christmas party.  Apparently it is a holiday tradition there to provide all of the workers with a turkey and to give appliances or other household things for presents. 

Remember next time you hear someone answer the phone at a hotel at three in the morning… that it could be me!

The past few weeks, I have been focusing on my own riding form rather than working on training horses.  I have a few major problems that make it almost impossible for me to address the horse’s problems.  I tend to lean forward.  I tend to grip the reins when I canter.  I tend to squeeze with my legs when I canter.  Also, I do not put my feet far enough into the stirrups. I know the root of all of these problems, but knowing where the bad habits have come from will not help me overcome them.  I am doing a number of exercises to help myself.  First off, I am practicing taking my leg completely off of the horse while I am riding at any gait.  Secondly, I am trotting and cantering any horse I can get my hands on (don’t worry, boss lady won’t let me ride any extremely unsafe horses). While cantering I have to focus on holding my reins at the buckle and picking them up only when I need to correct, then giving the horse his head again.  Also, when cantering I focus on where my body is.  I want my weight on my seat and I want to be sitting back, relaxed.  These two things together are amazingly hard for me to do, but I feel like I am starting to get it.  I also have been checking where my foot is in the stirrup quite often.  It is funny, but when my foot is properly in the stirrup, I don’t lose them nearly as often as I used to.

I had a bit of a breakthrough ride on Scotch a couple of days ago.  Scotch is the gelding that I rode on a lot of packtrips the past two summers.  He is a large bodied quarter horse with a long walk, a nice big trot, and a forward, happy canter.  I love riding this horse and I can do most anything with him, but he has a few bad habits that keep him from being a good guest horse.  When I took him out, I was told to trot and canter most of the ride and walk very little.  I am completely comfortable on this horse because we have so many miles together and have been in some strange situations with each other.  I realized, especially at the lope, that the more I relaxed and sat back and just allowed my leg to hang, the better he went for me.  We worked a little bit on our canter transition.  I push his hindquarters into the direction of the lead I want to pick up by putting my outside leg into leg position three (further back), I make sure my weight is on my outside seatbone to free up his inside, and I squeeze with both legs to transition.  Once he figured out what I was asking, the transition got easier and he got his leads.  When we were into the canter, I held my reins at the buckle and only picked up with my leg when he needed urging on.  By the end of the ride Scotch had his ears perked up and seemed happy, and I was happy because my position made me feel more balanced and in control.  When I wanted a downward transition, I asked Scotch with my seat, and he would come back to me. 

It is being drilled into my head that a horse can’t learn unless it is allowed to make mistakes.  This makes my bad habit of always keeping a short rein, a bit problem.  I am keeping my horses from leaning right and wrong on their own.  I remember back when I was in middle school and I would ride Monty, the neighbor’s old gelding, after school every day, I would always shorten my reins before we make a right turn onto my road.  I anticipated him refusing this turn, so I shortened up on him and took a tight hold on him and asked him to turn before he actually could.  By doing this, I think I set myself up for failure.  I anticipated a refusal, so he often tried to avoid that turn with me.  When my friends would ride him, they never seemed to have trouble there, because they didn’t think it would be a problem and didn’t tell him that there was something wrong there.  I am learning a lot right now, but I still have to look back and relate it to what I have learned in the past. 

I am having a little bit of trouble with myself in this learning process.  It is sometimes hard for me to admit that after fourteen or so years of riding, I still am almost at square one.  I am still a beginner in so many regards and have so much to learn.  I may have trained Abby over that summer when I was in college, but some of that was just luck that she turned out to be a decent mare.  I also need to remember that while I trust boss man and boss lady to teach me what they think is correct, that doesn’t mean that I will stick with everything they teach me.  There are hundreds of ways to train a successful, working horse and no one way is completely correct.  I will use their methods while I am training under them, but at some point I will put off the tools that they teach me in with the tools I have learned elsewhere to form my own training style. 

When I am having trouble with my ego and trouble being humble and being a student, please remind me of how much I have learned in the past couple of years.  Remind me of how an education about horses is a never ending one.  Remind me that there is always room to improve as long as I am not too stubborn about it.  Despite all of this, sometimes I still miss the days when horses were just about love and freedom for me.  Sometimes I still miss just jumping on Danar bareback and cantering as fast as we could just to get away from stress and people and myself…