Anniversary

I realized when reading Andrea's post on Eventing a Gogo about her four year anniversary with Gogo that my two year anniversary with Sora just passed and I completely forgot to mention it. Sora came home on August first in 2008 and my life has been irrevocably changed since then.

It's funny to think now about what I was looking for when I bought her and how different that is then what I'm doing now. When I starting looking for my dream horse being competitive at Dressage and a calm and trainable nature were both at the top of my list. Now I don't care about any of those things and while a powerful movement still means a lot to me I feel like everything else matters less than the bond that I have with her.

Yesterday my hoof trimmer came out to do the hooves of the other two horses and must have had something bothering her because she yelled at both horses and snapped at me for the first time since she's been coming here. Part of me wanted to tell her to just leave and part of me could see that our horses were being testy (maybe because of her attitude in the first place) and wanted to just wait it out. That's the part of me that won and while eventually she got over it and calmed down I was very uncomfortable about the whole thing. The reason I even write this is that while our trimmer was yelling Sora came over to me and started playing, lightening my mood and calming me down. After that I was able to roll my eyes at the trimmer and try to work with the horses to make it easy for her.

Because of Sora's playful mood I decided that it was a perfect day to play/train with her once Erika left. I planned on riding her with my new saddle but couldn't quite work up the courage since I hadn't been on her back in a while and hadn't ridden her with a saddle in quite a long time. So I pulled the saddle once we got to the mounting block and slid onto her bareback with just the cordeo. It was wonderful, she was in a teaching mood and so I started to figure out how she wants me to cue for going forward, tilt my pelvis forward and tighten my butt muscles, and turn. She would stand completely still until I got it right and then reward me with a few forward steps or a turn. When she wanted me off she backed up a couple of times and stood still and I obliged and got off. I was so happy I walked around for the rest of the day smiling =)

Happy second anniversary baby