Back at it

 Happy New Year! I celebrated the holidays with some forced rest over over Christmas (oops, caught the flu) and a delightfully quiet New Year's to ring in 2025 and my 33rd year. The dogs have loved snuggle time but they are positively feral with need to romp and do their normal things. 

I had every intention of sending Christmas cards this year and it just... didn't happen. Oops.

I've been bad about keeping up with the blog. Life happens, it gets busy, and October 12 was one year since I lost the best Goober. Then work blew up (in the best way, just SUPER busy and working very long hours this contract season). But time is precious, and I don't ever want to forget this time with Tilly. She is already growing up so fast, and I'm going to blink and she'll be a full-fledged Big Girl carting my butt around (with any luck, and a lot of professional help!) before I know it. 

Tilly remains the most delightful of babies and is a bright star in the current shitstorm of life. She is lovely, or goofy depending on what angle you look at her, though I find all her angles endearing and perfect. I'm simply enamored with her. 

Taken end of November

Not my fav conformation pics I've taken of her but standing still is not our forte and sometimes I take what I can get

The best part of having a Tilly is that she is two (and a half, as I imagine her correcting me) and that means I am entirely off the hook on nights where I work until 7 and it's too dark to possibly consider leaving my house to go pet the baby horse. 

We've settled into a nice routine over the past few months. She gets worked in the arena or field about two times a week, usually on weekends. She gets brought in and groomed and loved on another two or so times, sometimes just once, sometimes up to three, and sometimes I just walk the dogs out to her field and give her and Zena scratches, cookies, and love. In the field, Tilly has developed the habit of turning herself around and planting her butt in front of me, wiggling it around until I scratch the good spot. The first time she did it I told her off because I thought she was being rude and aiming to assert herself, but there is nothing nefarious in her intentions. Just needs a big ol' booty scratch (though I question how smart it is to allow this behavior, oops. We're working on boundaries).

The baby monster has come a long way in her work, too. For a two year old, here is my current framework around what her work can include on any given day: 

• Walk quietly around the farm, stopping to assess and approach anything that gives her pause. We don't linger unnecessarily, but we investigate to the point we are confident in moving around the cause of spook, even if we still flick an ear at it
• This is rarely any kind of issue, as she usually walks straight up to the cause for concern and touches it
• Wear a bareback pad during her work sessions
• Lunge respectfully in whatever space we are in - short sessions, mostly walking and trotting, very little if any canter, with a focus on maintaining appropriate circle distance between me and Tilly aka not diving in to me when she thinks she's done
• Voice cues to walk, trot, and canter, both with the words and cluck to trot, kiss to canter, and general knowledge of 'ho' to halt
• Walk or trot over poles / raised cavalleti on the lunge or in hand (we do this less frequently)
• Practice walking, backing, and some basic laterals in-hand 
• Try, and fail, to not dive in to me when I ask her to stop moving forward. We REALLY need a halt, and what I'm doing isn't working so any ideas are welcome! 

Tilly came to me with basic knowledge of lunging, though her experience was mainly working in a round pen and quite a lot of groundwork on a long lead. It was totally age-appropriate, and I'm grateful to her first family for the basics they installed in her smart little baby brain. 

Her weekly lunge sessions are kept short and sweet. The past few months we have been working on a progression from more of what I consider in-hand work, to trotting circles around me like a real lunging horse. She now reliably maintains some semblance of a circle around me, and is getting more consistent with maintaining her distance from me rather than always diving in to say hi. She does this in the outdoor, covered, and field like the best girl. Never once has she tried to get away from me, she is happy for me to be her central anchor. 

Something I've been working on with her is the understanding that she can walk on a circle and is not going to be chased to trot - she is going to be asked nicely to go forward when I decide. When asked to move out on a circle, she still always offers a trot first, but I've been able to get her to come back to a walk more quickly over the past few months. She associates her circles with trotting, but I want her to walk, and it really is very hard. I hold my whip out straight between us, think connecting my belly button to her shoulder, so it's not 'chasing' her from behind, but it's helping me maintain physical distance since downward cues still inspire her to dive in to me. Then I'll make her circle a little smaller, and encourage her to waaalk. She's picking up on this faster and faster, and it's becoming less of a thing. When asked to go forward, she is quick to comply, and her walk to trot transitions are great. 

My mom came to visit the weekend before Thanksgiving and took some videos for me. It was windy, chilly, and there were other horses in the arena which is a big distraction for a baby horse. Of course, she stopped videoing when Tilly had settled and I sent her over some poles, but hey have some clips anyway (I really hope the videos work because blogger still likes to eat some things I have to figure out a better way to do videos that isn't a huge lift for me).

She also knows how to canter on cue, and come back to a trot after, though I don't ask her to canter every time, or for very long. At this stage I would rather focus on her mental knowledge of what I'm asking than her physical fitness. To me it's far more important at her age that she understands the cue to canter rather than has the longevity to do it on a circle for any length of time. 

The other concept I'm trying to instill in her in an age-appropriate way, is to go over something when asked without too much of a fuss. This involves a lot of leading her over and around jumps and cavalleti of varying sizes in the arena, though obviously we only go over the small ones. It can also mean that she walks through a puddle on the way to and from her field, rather than go around, and we walk over the little logs and occasionally trot over a slightly larger (but still small) log in the field when we work there. She loves cavalleti and poles, and is very sensible about finding her feet and figuring out where they are meant to be when faced with an obstacle. Right now, the name of the game is to do what she is asked, and if it takes a moment for her to figure it out she absolutely gets that moment. I don't care about height or width or working her hard - it's the basic concept of 'oh cool something reasonable is in front of me and I'm meant to pick my feet up and continue forward' that I'm after. 

Tilly has also started to wear a bareback pad every time I work her. She doesn't care about it being put on her or girthed up in or out of the barn or arena. She DOES have feelings about how it feels on her body when she first starts to move around, and occasionally still likes to launch into mini bucking sprees at the start of her sessions. This doesn't bother me too much, though I am now working to refocus her immediately so it doesn't become a learned behavior to start every working session with acrobatics. I try to do a few transitions to start, or if there is a pole handy I send her over it and she's down to business and quickly moves on from the sass. 

"No sass here, I am perfect."

She has come so far in my time with her, and not at all because I've drilled her or spent an extensive amount of time training her. Most of what I do with her involves setting expectations on how she should be behaving at any given time, and pushing her where appropriate to be better, try a little harder, or major boundary setting like absolutely the heck not little lady, you do not get my attention with your teeth - a lesson she has had to learn only once. And yes, all of this is training for a young horse, but it's not drilling 'working' concepts into her but rather creating a foundation so she is a good citizen in and out of the arena. 

This has been a hard season, with far too many wonderful horses gone too soon the past few months. Remaining present and mindful is something I've been working on, and not taking time for granted. So I'm going to commit myself to blogging to capture these moments and milestones with Tilly, and all the things in between. No promises on how frequent, but I don't want this to fall fully to the side. 

The girls wore fly masks well into November. What I had hoped were lovely sunset pictures turned out like this... Zena's face makes this even better. 

The holidays are full of ups and downs, so hugs to everyone who made it through. Hug your horses and pets, it's always a good time to appreciate our reasons for getting through the day.