Meghan's Parelli summer part 2.......

This was really what I would call Meghan and Carissa's "Parelli Summer" Both of them spent hours with, Easy and Carissa's Belle. Belle was 6 yrs old, coal black little Missouri Fox Trotter mare. Easy again was 21, both of the girls were 15, when they did this Demonstration. First they did a talk to the audience and a question and answer session, they did this again in between the ground and riding section.


Meghan starting some on-line work with Easy, look at their legs, Easy would "dance" with Meghan and match her every move, with no touching at all. Here they are stepping backwards. Easy is a master of body language, I will explain that more in tomorrows post. I just love the intensity of the communication between the two of them, Easy's ear and eyes and Megs eyes and head, it really was incredible to watch. I hope Meghan appreciates what a special gift this was that Easy gave her.

Carrissa putting the tarp on Belle. At this point Carissa had not ridden Belle yet.


A little bit of yo-yo.

Meghan starting her liberty demo with Easy, there is no lead rope on the horse. You can see the ring we built with white braided string, 70foot in diameter, they had to set this up every time they did a demo that day. We got really good at fast set up, us parents, LOL. They had a tarp, barrels, poles, jump, foam noodles, and the Parelli ball, to play with.

Jumping barrels at liberty, Easy stays right with her and does everything asked.
This red barn on the right is the livestock barn, the horse barn is even farther to the right on the other side of the grandstands. Dont get me wrong, if Meghan lost consentration Easy would take off the other way, she didnt do it often, but Meg had to pay attention to her at all times and stay connected.

This picture is all about the expression, look at Easy's face. Meghan is asking her to come in to her.

I think this is a really cool picture, natural spotlight.

Meghan is still playing with Easy on-line in this picture. I will never get over the beautiful background we have to ride in at our fairgrounds.
I wish I could post a few minutes of the video I took, but they are still on 8mm tape.

I still have one more day of Post from this Parelli summer, with even cooler photos, one of both Meghan and Easy off of the ground, in the air, side by side.

Part 3 the final installment.........

Parelli, the begining........practice, practice, practice

This is not meant to be a Parelli commercial, only our experience, and it is a great experience, I got beautiful pictures of the process.

Parelli has been fun for us. Meghan and Easy really developed a close relationship with Parelli techniques. This set of pictures are from a session Meghan did at home, just her and Easy. This is our riding area, and pen about 50x80feet. We were introduced to Parelli by friends, went to the Albany Or. tour stop in 2005, had a lot of fun. We are not die hard religious Parelli, I know a lot of people who are, and thats not bad, but some people take it to extremes. Parelli has worked for us so far, and Meghan probably could have gotten through level 2 ground skills easily. Meghan and Carissa practiced a lot before they did all of the Demos at 4-H horse camp and the fair, at horse camp they did 5 demos in one day, the demo was about 45 min each time, they were really tired, and decided that it was way to much in one day! My non-horsey husband actually went and video taped them for 4 plus hours! While I was working.

This is the friendly game...

The yo-yo game.......

This is the porcupine game......

Circling game, on-line.....

The horses job is to keep going at the same speed, no problem for Easy.

More friendly game.....



Coming in for praise....Easy absolutely thrives on Parelli, she always has her ears up and seems to enjoy the exercises.

The ground work really helped Easy relax when she was ridden, she was so much more responsive. Meghan has become a hell of a rider, jumping bareback, she spent a lot of time bareback doing this. At the Albany Or. tour stop, the girls actually went and spoke to Pat Parelli and asked his permission to give their demo. he was great with the girls and gave them a lot of encouragement, he said" give them the wow, so they ask how?" and I think these girls did an awesome job.



I will post pictures of the actual demos next. There are some really cool pics to come!

Meghan and Easy '05........

OK if I post the Parelli demo now I will be our of order chronologically, so here is Meghans first year with Easy in 2005. I also believe that this is the first year I had my digital camera so there are a lot more pictures of Meghan than I took of Sara over the years, I love my digital camera!


We start out the same with the Showmanship class, geez I actually got one where she looked up at me. She got a blue in this class.

This was the year that friend Caitie was up at fair with us here is Caitie and Prints.

Decorating the stalls is always a huge endeavor. They have a stall poster that tells about them and an educational poster that gets judged. Meghan and Dad made the tack box in this year, turned out beautiful. It now is finished and has a cut out initials MH in blue on the side. They ran out of time to get it stained and finished before fair.

Here is a close up of here educational poster, it is the same one we took pictures for in my prior post, and she got a blue ribbon.
I got a candid shot of her waiting for bareback class.
And Dad got a shot of me video tapping Meghan. I usually try to get someone to take pics while I video her riding classes, this is just in the warm up. Meghan is out there on the far right. I am wearing my Air Force T-shirt, this is the first year Sara wasnt there, she was in Biloxi then.

And again in the warm up ring, I like the lighting.

All lined up at the end of the class. This is in the late afternoon, we are facing directly east, and the arena gets shade late in the day.Warm up again for Western Eq. class. I love that navy blue and tan saddle pad we found, Meghan will not wear black pants for show, has to have blue ones, so we found a pad to go with the blue. This was a different day than Bareback, it looks overcast.



Caitie loves to jump and here is a good shot of her and Prints jumping.

Every year I am amazed at how pretty of a venue we have to enjoy our little fair in, this is our little slice of the Columbia River Gorge, looking out from the grandstands over the midway, the river is there at the base of the hill, this is looking south.

There are a lot of good memories here. The red building is the exhibit hall where they display all the crafts and quilts and veggies and all.

OK tomorrow I can start posting, it will have to be in two probably, the Parelli demo that the girls did. It was pretty awesome! I have to tell ya.

Meghan and Easys story........

Meghan got to ride Easy after big Sis left for the Air Force, Here we are taking pics to demonstrate showmanship, for a poster to enter in the fair, Dad actually took the pics.

An interesting note about Skamania co fair, and what the horse kids have to wear. I think Skamania is the last county in the state to have a strict dress code. They have to wear dark pants, boots, White shirt with no embellishments, and a tie. Also a Hat in showmanship and they are required to wear helmets. I kind of like it, for one we dont have to spend so much money on show clothes and for two, visually it brings all the kids down to a similar level, and they are judged on their riding, not on how much bling they have. It works well for our little county, there are usually only 65-75 horses showing, small huh. It is really nice to have a small fair, in the neighboring county there are over 600 horse kids in the horse project alone, in our little county there are 300 kids in the whole 4-H program. I think the small fair gives them a real taste of what 4-H is, we dont have expensive show horses and all the expensive clothes and saddles, and when our kids do go to state they do well, Kila in our 4-H group has taken 3 or 4th in Saddleseat for the last couple of years, and the first year they had jumping at state one of our girls earned a silver medal for the Western WA state fair. so we give a fair showing for such a small county.

We took a lot of glamor shots of these two over the last couple years. Thats our Meghan!

the 4-H group, Carissa, on Oakey, Kila on Desy, and Meg on Easy.


Arent they just gorgeous, but I am biased LOL.

next post, Carissa and Meghan do a Parelli Demo at the fair!

Ok mother nature........

Ok mother nature I will not complain any more! After hearing the news this morning about how much snow they have in Spokane WA, I am done complaining LOL they have over 6' freakin feet of snow!!!!! oh my. I am so glad I am not having to deal with that. They handle snow up there really well, I lived in Cheney for a year. But 6 feet has to overwhelm anyone! I cant even imagine, you have to have a tractor or a really nice neighbor with one, it was bad enough trying to clean the barn with only one foot of snow! oooooh that is a lot of shoveling!

We got another 3 inches last night......but it is supposed to be in the high fortys and dry soon.
We came out of Wallyworld at around 4:30ish and it was snowing really hard. The weather people said it was supposed to rain......... hmmmmmm, at least the roads are wet but clear.
Had enough snow pics yet? LOL

The railing where we measure......
back deck, and puppy prints.....going out to make yellow snow.

Front door, and people prints LOL, I hope they arent going out to make yellow snow!

I will start Meghan and Easy's story tommorow.

Horsey goals for 2009........

When we get through the last year of WAHSET I plan on doing a lot more of this.....
(Meghan and Rocket are 5th from the right)

In 2004 I rode Emma in a Pat Wyse clinic, I learned a lot, she was still pretty green so didnt get to learn a lot of the advanced stuff. Had a lot of fun, went with my friend Michelle who is going through a cancer scare right now too. I worked so hard to get us both in shape for this clinic, she is in the best shape in this pic that I have ever had her. Just an interesting note, I was one, of two people that wore a helmet in the clinic, do a lot of you wear helmets when you ride or not? I had just come through my car wreck and didnt feel I needed to take a chance with not wearing one, I still wear one every time.

This is what I want to see more of this year, good friends ahead of me on the trail. I want to take Meghan on some more trail rides this summer and join that NH group and maybe get some new buddies there too. Oh "note to self, order that gel seat for your saddle" LOL this was the trail ride that almost killed me LOL 6 hrs and my butt bones swelled up to tennis ball size, no lie!!! Emma does not hit the ground lightely, but she loves the trails. That is my friend Judy on her Foxtrotter, Rhythm, she didnt have big bruises LOL.

So heres to sore muscles and bruised butts for 2009!!!!!!

2008/2009 MeMe

This MeMe has been going around and intrigued me, if I can come up with everything, its been a long hard year for me.



1. List 5 good things that happened to you in 2008.



1)Found out what was wrong with me medically, good and bad

2)True friends show up to help you through, even when you havnt seen them in years

3)I got to step back and really see what is important to me.

4)I got to come home from the hospital. thats a big one, almost had to go to rehab facility.

5)I have a different outlook on life. I am more tolerant in some things and not so much in

others, rude people piss me off! much more than they used to. Life is to short to treat

people like dirt.



2. List 3 bad things that happened to you in 2008.



1)I was told I had a brain tumor

2)I had to spend 2 months in the hospital

3)I now have things wrong with me that I never had before my surgery.



3. List 5 things that you want to do in 2009.



1)I want to ride more. I have thrown myself so hard into work and my new job in 2007, that

I want to do what I really want to, not just work. I was to the point that I felt all I was doing

was work, with no time for family or my horses.

2)Take another trip to the beach and the casino with Hubby, the weekend getaway thing.

3)Let my friends know how much I appreciate them, even though I am terrible about

keeping in touch.

4)Do the "extra" things to show my Hubby I love him. He took such good care of me, for the
second time, when I was down, I want to repay some of that. Maybe not so much as repay
but show how much I appreciate him.

5)Join the natural horsemanship group that meets around here and enjoy my horses!

Take the time to get involved in a horse group, something I havnt done being in 4-H with

the girls the last 11 years.



4. List 3 lessons you learned in 2008.

1)I learned that I am tougher than I think, again, but please give me the drugs so I dont

have to be. (as in med. stuff)

2)Good friends still do care, even though they have been caught up in their own problems

too.

3)Wanting to be with and ride my horses drives me more than I knew, its what kept me

going when I was in the hospital.



5. Favorite read of the year.

Sara Douglas, Wayfarer Redemption series, I havnt read as much as I did before the surgery.





6.Favorite movie watched of the year.

The golden compass/The Bucket list



7.Most favorite Horsey moment of the year.



The first time I got back on a horse after all my surgeries and doctors and hospitals and radiation. I got on Mickey and rode her around bareback it felt so good and she was good, why her I dont know, as she tends to be flinchy when ridden bareback, overly sensitive, but she was good. I would have thought I would get on Emma. Mickey is so smooth in her movements though and doesnt jar you at all, she is a Cadillac, and an equitation trot to die for, she doesnt move you at all.





The good things were the hardest, I think I learned a lot of life lessons this year, I want to be done with the School of Hard Knocks!!!! But that is life, right?

Here is a picture from good times and good memories. Me on Joe, with my friends Traci and Patty. I still have the bridle he is wearing, I got it for my birthday at 12 or 13.

Birthday dinner, and it is snowing again.....

.........will it never stop! The snow that is. I have come to the conclusion that we are going to have a really bad winter this year. It has just started, I wonder what it will be like in Feb., the first Equestrian team meet is the last weekend of Feb., last year we had snow at the meet, and a lot of people on the team had a hard time getting home. I guess all we can do is wait and see.....

Today is Hubbys 42nd Birthday. We went out to dinner to celebrate, ate at Axteca mexican restaurant, good stuff, I had the fish taco. We decided to invite these two ornery kids to go with us.......

Meghan and her beau, David. Azteca has a huge menu! as in a lot of pages.
Oh and the rare picture of me and Hubby. I took my new camera and got Meghan to take the pic. We shopped a bit today, it snowed when we were at Costco. I am just glad that it isnt sticking during the day. We woke up to another inch on the ground, that melted mostly. The slush had turned into hard ice in the parking lot of Sportsmens Warehouse, tough walking.
Now he is older than me for a couple of months LOL Happy Birthday OLD man LOL

Sara and Easy......

Sara got to ride Easy for 9 years in 4-H. They did ok, Easy is not a performance horse. She did better at gaming, but we only gamed during fair so there was no chance for her to get really good. This is little Sara, she started 4-H at 9 years old, and that's what she is here in this pic. probably at their first fair, yes we had tie stalls.

Sara with Easy in gaming get up.

I did get Sara to ride huntseat, one year her and Easy got Grand Champion at our local fair in Hunseat Eq.

They also did bareback eq. classes

A fundraiser open show we went to.

Another pic from the fundraiser show, showmanship class, this is probably as good as Easy has ever looked, here..........

Gaming day at horse camp. One of my favorite pics, along with the next one........

Of Meghan and Mickey, I made them both pose the same. I want to put both of these in the same frame sometime.



Sara made it to Western Washington State Fair, twice with Easy, it is a fun fun trip going up to Puyallup for State fair, we had a lot of fun, both times. Western Eq.
And Huntseat again, at State Fair. Sara is really tall @5'10, and it was hard to get her to look proportioned on her horse, for show. Easy is 15.1, and Sara really couldn't have ridden a shorter horse, and looked good.

When Sara was 15 Grandpa gave her Easys papers for her birthday, so Easy is Saras horse. She misses her a lot.

We had good years in 4-H. Sara after High School Grad. decided to go do this.......

Join the Air Force. She is still in now, and is a weather forecaster. She is stationed in Texas right now and she will go to Iraq for 6 months this coming April. Sara is getting married also on January 31 '09.

They really are starving after they finish basic training.
And Sara and grandpa at the Alamo in San Antonio, Tx. Another pic I need to get framed, I love the background. If you havnt been to San Antonio I highly recommend it, we had a blast and would love to go back.

I still have Meghan and Easys story to tell...............