Erin’s Got Gait

My trainer’s assistant Erin has given me lessons numerous times when my trainer has been out of town. She always tells me that she loves teaching us and that Apache and I are so much fun and so interesting. Today, in lieu of taking my usual lesson with my trainer, I asked Erin to ride him, so that she can experience the thrill of riding a gaited horse, as well as have the first hand knowledge for when she teaches us. It was her first time on a gaited horse ever. She had a lot of fun. I recorded it and you can watch the video here. Erin was having to learn how to keep him square and steady in his gait, much trickier on a horse that can do as many different gaits as he can. She was also having to ask for go without letting him run up into a canter. While you may have to do that with any horse, it becomes harder when you are having to concentrate on other things you’re not used to. Apache does run into a canter a few times on her, but she gets him back. He also gets pacey a few times, and then on the second to last pass, he’s really pacey the entire time, even at his dog walk. Off camera, I mentioned it to her and told her how to feel for it and to use the hard ground to her advantage to listen for a square rythym in his hoofbeats. She took another pass down there and another pass back, just at a dog walk, feeling for it, and correcting him. Part of that last pass back down towards me is on the video and you can see that she is finally able to break it up a bit. My trainer came up just after that and he did one more nice square pass, but I didn’t get that on film. Overall, considering that it was her first time with him and his first time with her, I think she did a fabulous job. The first few passes, he is poking his nose out a bit too much and isn’t as square and steady as I’d like most of the way down, but each time, just as she gets to me, she gets him to hit that stride and does a great running walk to the end of the road.

More Ratty Cuteness

I got a bunch of good pictures of the rat’s antics. They both are cute with Sammy’s water bowl. Whenever Jet hears Sammy drinking out of the bowl, she runs over to join her. She’ll sit on the edge and lean in, scooping up the water with her hands. Bungie likes to play in the water by herself. When it gets shallow, she’ll climb in and splash around, also drinking some of it with her hands like her sister. Sammy doesn’t seem to mind the intrusion on her bowl. I’m sure it would be a different story if I gave them a chance to do that with her food bowl. Another interesting thing I discovered is that sometimes when the door of their cage swings out, they will do a tightrope walk across the top edge of it and hang out while it swings back and forth. I have seen both of them do it, but I only caught Jet on film. Jet has also found a new climbing spot – the screen of my sliding glass door. I caught her on film just as she reached the very top. I have never had a rat that was such a climber. Last, I got some more cute pictures of Bungie sleeping on my shoulder. Jet has yet to do any napping on me, even in my lap, any cleaning of me, or any sitting still at all for petting. She probably won’t mellow out until she gets older. I had one other rat that was like her and that rat mellowed out at about a year of age. Unfortunately, that can be half of a rat’s life! She did give me a little kiss the other day, but only because there was something with flavor on my skin that she was licking. It was still progress though. She usually won’t even do that. You can check out all the pictures starting here.

Playing Softball Again

I played softball when I was younger. I can’t remember when I started, probably around age 8. I stopped playing when I was 13 and we moved. In the years since, I had only played once when a friend of mine put a game together several years ago, just for fun. I was surprised to find at that time that I still had some hand-eye coordination despite the fact that I have had to wear glasses since age 16. I also still had a decent swing. I am not a big exercise nut, but I have always loved softball and found it a lot of fun. Of all the sports and activities I was involved in as a child – ice skating, softball, ballet, gymnastics, soccer, tennis, swimming, horseback riding – it was one of my favorites. I also greatly enjoyed gymnastics, and of course horseback riding was hands down my passion and still is. So when some guys at our company announced they were trying to put together a company softball team, I jumped at the opportunity. The games aren’t going to start until July, but we have started practices. We had the fourth one today. One thing that needs real improvement is the distance and speed of my throw. Our coach has given me pointers, but I still need work. My hand-eye coordination is still good, but that is only going to get me so far. As far as my swing goes, he says I have hitting down (making contact with the ball and getting it to go), but if we can improve my mechanics, I can get it to go farther and do more line drives. It’s frustrating because I’m used to the way my swing feels so when I try to apply his tweaks, I start missing the ball altogether. Good thing we have a month of practices left for me to get it down. The league is a men’s league, but a team in the league can have up to 2 females on their team. Supposedly our team has one other female, but I haven’t seen her at any of the practices yet. It will be interesting being the only girl on the team if it works out that way, or even one of two. A career as a software engineer has put me in a good position to deal with that though. I am pretty competitive so not having the strength and speed of the men will definitely be frustrating to me, even though rationally I know that they have a physical advantage. I still expect I will have a lot of fun and it will be a great way to get exercise without having it feel like work.

On the Road Again

Today, we took Apache out on the road and worked him on the hard ground. The last few times we did that, he was super animated, yet balanced and controlled. Before the last few times, he has always been animated and pumped when we go out on the road, but goosey and uneven. We were finally able to start getting some consistency out of him but still with the added momentum and energy we get when we don’t make him work in the arena. He hates just going around in circles and loves having a long stretch of open road ahead of him to motor down. I finally remembered my video camera today so I could see for myself how he looks with that extra animation. He was still well behaved and controlled, but less animated than he usually is on the road. It was cool to get to see video, but it was a little disappointing that the day I remembered my camera was not one on which he gave a dazzling performance. Don’t get me wrong – he was a good boy and he looks good, but I know that since it didn’t *feel* like he was stepping as big and as fast as he usually does on the road, that he must *look* even better when I do feel that. We did a little bit of slow gaiting back and forth, and then finally sped him up coming down the road towards home for a few passes. During one of the passes a big water truck showed up and was coming up the road behind him, although you can’t see it in the video. It caused him to lift and puff up quite a bit and take some goofy steps, but didn’t really give him any extra go. You can hear my trainer laughing at him when he does it in the video, which you can find here.

Super Jet

In her eternal quest to explore everything, Jet has come up with a new trick. She has discovered that she can shimmy up the edge of the sliding doors on my closet. When she decides she’s gone far enough up, she turns sideways and slides back down. She gets a little more bold each time. This last time, she got about 2/3 of the way up and I managed to snap a picture before she came down.