Mo is hair. It’s true.

It must be spring because a recent grooming yielded horse hair. Not SOME horse hair, not a LITTLE horse hair but drifts, scads, clouds, tons and tons and tons of horse hair. It’s coming right off with the barest touch of any kind of brush you want to use. The shredder blade is best because it doesn’t have long enough teeth to catch the hair and hold into it, like the dog brush I’m also using to try dislodge some of the dirt on Mo’s skin so that Leah’s trimmer doesn’t get ruined again. Someone asked me how long it took to groom him. It’s not how long it takes, it’s how much time one is willing to spend on the task.  time for the lesson to start? Time to go home? Then grooming is done.

Back in MY day . . .

I hung out during a lesson the other night. Not one of my better decisions because it was way cold. It was an attempt to provide moral support to a friend who would have been working out there (to me, it’s out there) on a cold dark night, so I sat in on her class (she taught 5 girls) and sorta kinda help direct traffic once the lesson was over.

Watching the students and their parents reminded me of the days when I tool lessons, and in those days parents did not stay. They did not stay at birthday parties, they did not stay at lessons, they did not stay at sports practice, they did not stay at Brownie meetings or choir meetings or play with the children.

This is no longer the case and has not been the case for about 20 years, but I’m not used to it.  And it was colder than . . .oh my goodness the swear words I could use to describe the cold! . . .so it was good that the girls had some help with putting away saddles and such. And I sympathize with the families that have to pick up one kid from one activitiy and then get on the road to pick up the next kid from the next activity (no one goes to bed before 10:30 p.m. anymore either and I really hate to see that as well).  But I don’t sympathize with parents who give their kids directions while the kids are in class. The child should have only one teacher at a time. I believe this because I myself cannot listen to more than one person at a time. And the teacher can’t tell the parent to be quiet.

Fly predator update: They are on order. The first batch should ship in April

Gabby update: She is fine. I give her a treat every now and again and wonder at her prehensile upper lip.

Amazing clinic

Participated in a clinic last Saturday — really, really good. The instructor, the other student, and I all clicked, as Leah put it, just clicked. Tracy and I took a clinic with this instructor a couple of months ago and we both heard “Put your hands down! Put your hands down” pretty much the whole time. After the 1st clinic, Leah asked me to think about what all of my instructors tell me. Pretty much, it’s “Put your hands down! Put your hands down!”

It’s that tension issue, it’s that curling-up-in-a-ball-because-that-seems-safe thing that I have been. Doing. For. Years.

I still do it, but now I can *feel* myself do it, I can counter act it, I can sit back in the saddle and, heck why not, take up a handful of mane at the base of Mo’s neck (if that won’t keep your hands down, I don’t know what will), and just ride. Flapping my legs helps also because (again at the teacher’s insistence) because while you are flapping your legs, you are also keeping your seet.

When the class was over, I grabbed Mo’s big muzzle and kissed him. I kiss him a lot anyway, but it was a fierce love, you-ragged-little-horse kind of kiss.  Mo was fine with it.