Help!  I Can’t Get DOWN

Off of Merlin, that is.  Obviously I eventually got down, but this is a problem from my Multiple sclerosis that I’ve not run into since I was diagnosed.

From long before I was diagnosed, I had started sort of vaulting out of the saddle when I wanted to get off.  I had no problems with this method until, several months ago when I got hung up by the cantle trying to vault off Mick the first time I rode him.  So I started practicing getting off the…

What Merlin Really Wanted Was a Pacifier

Sometime last week while I was thinking about my lack of progress with Merlin I got to thinking about how a horse moves with his whole body.  As my body gets more together with riding at a walk I’ve noticed that when:

     The horse pushes off with his hind leg,

     The front leg on the same side is moving forward (and the top of the shoulder moves back),

     The horse’s barrel on the same side is moving…

Merlin, Deep Inside, Wants To Be a Statue

Ah, this week everything returned to normal, I got to ride three times this week!  Hurrah!

Since I had not gotten to ride Merlin for two weeks I had a vague hope that Merlin would decide to move.  When I approached him while Shannon was grooming him he greeted me with a nose bump and generally did not seem too upset to see me.  Shannon said that she had no trouble catching him today, so when I mounted him I was full of…

                       MERLIN IS AFRAID HE GAVE ME TOO MUCH LAST WEEK

Luckily for us in NC the weather decided to switch back from early summer to spring, so this week we have cool mornings and the afternoons will be pleasant.  The horses are still shedding so that they are not completely unprotected from the cooler temperatures.  Plus the gnats did not descend upon us until I started my ride.  Yeah for cooler weather!

Merlin was not very cooperative with me…

                                                         I WILL WALK FOR PRAISE

When I got to ride Merlin today I did not have big hopes since he “got away” with standing for 15 minutes last week.  As usual I waited for Merlin to sigh, and then I did my escalation of my driving aids, WALK, light squeeze with both legs, then a light touch of my spurs.  To my utter surprise Merlin started walking after making me…

                                                                Merlin Tests My Patience

     When I re-started riding Merlin 6 weeks ago Shannon warned me that Merlin would not move for anybody.  I told her I had thought over what I had done earlier and that I had decided that I had to change the way I rode Merlin, and that the BIG change was that I was willing to wait for Merlin to move from…

The weather here in the sunny South has been 20 degrees F higher than normal.  The weather forecasters have been telling us that we are getting May weather, not March weather.  Due to this we are now getting some bugs that are bad in May, namely gnats.  Millions of gnats.  Gnats in the ears, gnats flying up nostrils, gnats getting behind my glasses, luckily there is fly spray for the horses!  I am going to have to dig out my ear nets for the horses.  I just wish there were head nets…

 Grr. I wrote my blog and it disappeared again. 

This was not a very calm weekend, I got awaked by a robo-call at 3:00 AM Saturday morning about a tornado warning.  Luckily the local TV stations were following the weather so I saw that the real bad weather was not headed toward me and after an hour I finally got back to sleep.  Saturday when I woke up I learned that a tornado had passed a around 10 miles to the north,…

I got to ride today, last night Shannon suggested that we see what the weather was like at 10:00 AM, and when I woke up it was 19 F.  By 10:00 AM  the ground was still frozen so I asked if I could come out and make sure all my new tack I got for Merlin fit and Shannon said fine.  Well the 44" girth was just small enough (the Wintec Wides take a dressage girth) but I better get myself a shorter one for when he sheds his winter coat, the Warm-blood sized running martingle was big…

I was going to have an adventure today but it rained all night and the ring is too soggy so I am hoping I'll get to do it next Sunday.  The adventure was for me to ride Merlin again at Shannon's place.  Merlin is an 18.2 hand grey gelding, half Dutch Draft Horse and half Irish Sport Horse, a BIG GUY.  He came to Shannon's with issues after being used as a lease horse for a few years.  I used to ride him years ago, and the last time I got up on his back was April…