Skinny Horse
I'm back from my wonderful vacation. Rio still looks very skinny. We have continued to up her hay. I brought a scale to the barn to make sure we are giving her the maximum amount of her new feed.(she can have up to six lbs a day). No idea how many lbs the scoop we use holds, so the vet suggested we weigh it to be sure. She also suggested adding corn oil-up to 2 cups a day. Keep your fingers crossed that she will start putting some weight on and get back to her old self.
Extreme Cowboy Race Training
With all that in mind, we are training more slowly then I would have liked but that is the way it goes...I am not about to jeapordize her health. We have been working on moving hips, shoulders and laterally. Her spins are coming along slowly. I feel like maybe I am not cueing her quite right on the spins...especially where I put my foot. I'm going to see what my trusty books/magazines might have to say about that.
I am still nervous about our ability to jump and about my bareback riding. I am going to make sure and ride at least 10-15 minutes each time bareback. I can do this at a walk and trot and work up to the canter (I hope). I am sure that if we make it into the finals, we will have to complete part of the course bareback.
As far as jumping goes, I am going to continue the ground pole work with the low cross rail as the last option but for now, we will only do that once a week. We will work up to three times a week and add some height at the end. Right now that last cross rail is about 1 foot or so. In March, we will add multiple jumps so we eventually get used to jumping three jumps in a row.
Equine Affaire
The information on the clinics we can apply for are up on the Equine Affaire site. Brenda and I have been looking them over. The applications and videos are due by the 25th of this month. Since I won't know by then if I am accepted to the ECR, I won't be applying for any clinics that take place on Saturday or Sunday. It's kind of too bad since there were a couple I was interested in.
We will finish filming what we need for the application videos next weekend. I am trying to think of a creative way to showcase our work--and to get CHOSEN.