Dreaming.In.Reality

This past week I finally dropped my stirrups down and started working on a proper dressage seat. Flame, bless his heart worked mighty fine.l It’s a hard thing to do, getting him back on track while trying to get yourself working right. It’s been a long time for him to start working proper, it’s been even longer than that for me. I haven’t ridden in a dressage seat for coming close to 6 years, even though I rode in a dressage saddle. That hunter/jumper seat is a hard thing to ditch. But we plowed on, and had a couple good rides this week. Good solid 10 minutes before tacking up, working on moving forward.. i am aiming for a trot where he’s up tracking but not rushing (for you non horsie peeps, that’s having the hindfoot step into the footprint made by the front foot). After lunging I spent a good 10 minutes working on ground manners; lots of stepping off with me at a trot inhand, turns, stops, bowing, kneeling. That really gets his mind focused. Then I lunged him for another 10 minutes in tack.

I lowered the side reins to go where they rest at the base of his shoulder. usually I hook the sidereins up to the girth straps so they don’t slide down, but having them lower makes him lower his polline line and work the back muscles more. I have to build his back up, so all the lunging in tack is now like this for a while. Poor thing, was exhausted by the time I actualy decided to ride. Then we worked on lots of the same lowered polline frame. Had a nice swinging stride at the trot, and I worked on my own position while doing big circles and serpentines. He was quite light in the mouth and carrying himself for once, bending and changing direction of flextion in the curves. I posted in the trot for about 15-20 minutes, then I decided to sit because I had such a lovely trot coming out of him. Did that for 20 minutes.. and HOly crap I’m still feeling it a few days later. But as the old saying goes, no pain no gain right?

Continue reading ‘good rides and horse shoes’

I have updated the Series and Events gallery. The Ottawa Greek Festival 2004 images are complete and ready to view. Some of the prints are available for print. If you are interested please contact the webmaster via email.

well, mostly photos.. i thought of going to greekfest this afternoon to get some different dancer photos.. but it looks like it is going to rain. so we shall see i suppose. i need to call the farrier as well.. make sure he is coming today like he said he was.. if not, call him and ask hi to come out tomorrow or friday if he can. flame needs his toes done. so maybe if it’s raining it will be a good flame visit day. i need to update flame’s bloggie as well. i have a couple of posts that needs to be tossed in there.

ergh.. i have this list of little things running around in my head of what i need to do today, or in the next few days.. horseshoes, gas, groceries, clean, call my mom, talk to bev, fuss, wonder about kev, sleep, maybe photos… gruh*L*

I just haven’t been up for blogging the past few days.. Partially because I’ve been scurrying about doing things, and partially just because I’ve just been really freaking tired from scurrying about. So lets seee what have I been up too since I was feeling nostalgic about my bar back home. Which btw I found those photos digging through old archived photos of mine, hunting out specific Flame photos.

So.. Friday.. -thinks- I don’t think I did much on Friday. Saturday however, K and I got up, and went down to the Byward Market. I took the camera with me.. I got quite a few little nice shots. Checked out all the stalls for charms. I didn’t see much though that was of interest to me. I guess I need to have a look at them during the week I think, when there isn’t a zillion people trying to do the same. After the market we went down to East Wind in the Glebe. That store is so nice, they have some beautiful dinner ware. Oh to have the space and money for it. We’re still looking though, for what we went for. They DID have some nice stuff but it was either out of our price range, or not enough cups. 4 is an unlucky number in Japan, so tea sets are sold in sets of 2 cups or 5 cups. There is another East Wind ion Richmond Rd., so we’ll probably head down there in the next few weeks to have a looksee on what they have. I’m gonna go back downtown this week while K is in Hellville. There is a Asian shoppe, that I forgot about and could have gone to on Saturday, like RIGHT near where we were parked*L*

Continue reading ‘i’m still here honest!’

Just walkin’ through the front door
Puts a big smile on my face
It ain’t too far, come as you are
Hmm, hmm, hmm I love this bar

Continue reading ‘I love this bar it’s my kind of place’