Q and trimming

Q is headed back into yet ANOTHER heat cycle.  Oh joy.  Its mild right now, but I reckon by the weekend/next week she’ll be full blown, “Heeeeyyyyyyyy” to all creatures great and small.  I’m hopeful that this means she *won’t* be in any semblance of heat for the endurance ride on the 4^th – but I’m prepared to eat my words on that.  We’ll see.

I'm really slacking with taking my DSLR to the barn...

Black truly is "slimming" in photos...her stocking that goes above the knee convinced me of this! lol

She’s holding her conditioning really well, and, I think.  She is a lot stronger than I anticipated she would be.  Girl loves to boogie!  She really needs more hill work, as they make her huff more than the flat work on the rail trail does, but she’s doing really well apart from the whole super-social-mare-in-heat thing.

She’s still not mean or dragon-esque while in heat.  She’s just beyond distracted.  I have to get really creative with things to keep her mind on the job at hand.  I think I’m going to start playing around with barrels and racing patterns to do this some.  She can turn on a dime and her walk to canter/gallop transitions aren’t too shabby.  Just another thing to add to the list of activities.

(Video: I was lunging Q in the round pen [a good bit bigger than having her on this lead] and was really impressed with her movement and wanted to document it with video.  Stepped outside for better lighting.  You can see her get distracted and look for her friends.  Her boyfrann was yellin' for her, too.)

I woke at 5:30a this morning with intentions to go out and ride.  However, this was the first morning in awhile that I woke up and was just not feeling the whole riding thing.  I really wanted to sleep more.  Bad.  But I still got up and went out.  I trimmed all four of her feet; photographed a Renegade on her one foot for some analysis; and we practiced our trot outs.   She stood very well for all feet and let me trim them to my little heart’s content.  Within moments she seemed to understand what I expected with the trot out nonsense, but this was only one session.  We’ll see if it was a fluke or if she truly understood come tomorrow night and other days soon!

The morning started and ended with positive notes.  The whole session was positive really.  And that’s all I really wanted.

I SWEAR she was standing "normally" prior to this photo.  She feels the need
to turn and face me and thereby slam her rear into the wall/door and tuck her back
end under herself.  Makes it hard to get a good photo...

Could they stand any more similarly or look more similarin markings?  These were
adjacent photos on my cameraand it really made me chuckle flipping back and
forth and back and forth.  Hehehe.  Griffin is BEYOND awkward rightnow.  Even with
his eyes not being lit up by the flash. 

I trimmed two of Griffin’s feet, too, before my arms gave out.  I’ve let him go a bit and they needed more work.  But I really notice a difference in my personal endurance with feet trimming.  That shit is hard.  But muscles and skill are fast-developing.  I’ve ordered a stand though.  I can’t wait for it to come!  The worst part is holding the leg up while rasping!  But I’ve gotten very adept with my rasp handling to the point where I can even toss it in a manner to catch it in reverse direction.  Booya.  I’m loving this whole trimming thing.  =)