Selfie
| February 7, 2014 | Posted by Melinda under Uncategorized |
Was planning on writing a cute little story about how me and Farley went on a lovely little ride this afternoon since it would take too much brain power to write about Tig and a very interesting Farley/Tig ponying ride earlier this week.
I even took selfies of us prior to ride.
See how thrilled she looked?
Almost as thrilled when I saddled her up and she realized she wasn’t just being taken out for carrots and who knows what else .
She gave me perhaps the worst ride I’ve ever gotten out of her in the 6 1/2 years I’ve owned her.
The footing was bad, the sky was grey (I’m very amused how my camera phone tried to “adjust” the exposure in the picture above and made it look like there was blue sky and clouds…..BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA. It was totally grey and sun-less) it was misting/raining/sprinkling and she was infuriatingly BAD.
My head is still spinning. My blood pressure has returned towards the direction of normal.
Tig has been challenging this week. Farley actually put in a stellar performance on Monday that helped me out tremendously with Tig (more on that later). With all the drama, ALL I WANTED WAS A RELAXING NORMAL RIDE ON MY BROKE AND TRAINED HORSE.
BUT OH NO.
Today reiterated that the difference between Farley (15 year old with thousands and thousands of miles) and Tig (4 year old who just cantered under saddle last week for the first time) isn’t necessarily that one is EASIER to ride. Farley is just more PREDICTABLE.
As in, PREDICTABLY doesn’t like rain. Or quiet trail walks in bad footing. Or conditioning. Or doing something she sees no point in. But PREDICTABLY when the sh*t goes down, she isn’t going to dump me or hurt herself. Which is reassuring…..BUT DOES NOT ENDEAR HER TO ME WHEN ALL I WANTED WAS A NO BRAINER RIDE AND SHE DECIDES READ ME THE BOOK “MARE EVASIONS – PUTTING THEORY INTO PRACTICE”.
The good news is that Tig already has 2 rides this week and a third planned for this weekend, and there’s absolutely no reason to take Farley out again before I’m good and ready….so I can pretend horses don’t exist for a couple of days, go out for some nice mood-cleansing runs, and take some deep breaths. (while studying for Monday’s test, Wednesday’s surgery etc.).
Not cool Farley, not cool at all. Be good or I swear I will RETIRE YOU and will call you old to your face instead of just behind your back. Getting ALONG and LIKING each other for 12 to 24 hours at a time on the trail is PART OF THE JOB DESCRIPTION. Not just being fit and trail savvy.
Love your MARE descriptions; they are so right on! Replace the word rain with wind, and you just described Jesse – especially the “sees no point in” thing – and WHY should we condition? But let things get sketchy and you KNOW she will come through. I’ve had several good trainers tell me you have to be a ‘mare person’ to enjoy owning one.
Bionic Cowgirl
I think I definitely fall into the category of a “mare” person. But for the first time in MY ENTIRE time of owning horses, I think I finally saw the point of owning a gelding. I’ll probably quickly get over it, but that thought of “is THIS why people don’t like mares?????” crossed my mind.
Are we riding the same horse? All this week O and I have wanted to KILL EACH OTHER. I blame the grey cloudy crap.
That IS a mighty fine orange cotton lead rope. Mighty fine. I can’t wait to see how the orange rope reins I ordered turn out. Now I feel like I should give them to you in the spirit of matching 🙂
And again, I did LOL reading this post! Mares!
Cloudy grey crap? Trying hard to muster sympathy for that….nuh huh, nope, no sympathy here.
Also: if you check the copyright page of your edition of MARE EVASIONS, I’m sure you will see a Certain Dragon’s name as a contributing author!
But I’m jealous of you (whine). I wanna ride! Even a bad horse? No, not really. I need a saintly horse right now. Do saintly horses usually breathe fire?
I wonder if Farley is jealous of the time you are devoting to Tig…after all, she DID choose YOU, and now you are “choosing” Tig. And she may also be working to show you that she is NOT old.
And yes, I do believe horses- especially mares!- have the capacity for many/most of the same emotions we do. (Anthropomorphism rules!)
Hope the girls redeem themselves this (wet!) weekend!
Nikki
Farley has never struck me as having that sort of personality (“jealous”). Honestly, I feel like she’s sort of relieved whenever I come to the stable wander over to her to say hello and then focus on Tig. Farley LIKES going out….but she doesn’t enjoy wet weather AT ALL, and doesn’t see the point of conditioning rides that require any real effort.
However, I DO think that she’s sensitive to the words “old” and “retired”. ANY time over the last couple of years I’ve even seriously considered either word, she always makes her feelings absolutely known shortly after. Notably that she does NOT consider herself old, and she does NOT consider it time to retire. Don’t know how she knows, but she does.
When Farley was young-er (hehehehehe, see my choice of words there) she really did say “give me a chance to be your only horse, and your 100 mile horse” when Minx died, however I’ve gotten the sense over hte last year that she really wouldn’t mind me getting a second horse now. I think she knows that she’s earned her forever home with me, and seems to be a horse that does REALLY well on the “ride higher intensity less often” program. I’m going to blog about it AFTER studying for my repro test tomorrow, but I took her out earlier in the week to pony Tig and she whole heartedly jumped into her job as “tig-sitter/teacher” with all 4 hooves and seemed to get a lot of satisfaction out of schooling a youngster.
[…] briefly contemplated putting a hackamore on Farley for the ride and THEN remembered that she was not exactly an “angel” last time we were out and decided to set ourselves up for […]