Shawn & Flooding

I rode Shawn last Thursday and even though he was good, better than expected actually, it didn't really feel like anything special.

We were inside due to the recent ridiculous amounts of rain we've been getting here, something like 21 out 23 days in June have been rainy. He's feels so slow that I always find myself wondering if we're actually going to be able to make it over. We did though, every time.

Sunday I went to Maple Leaf to watch L take her greenie over the hunter X poles at her first jumping show. She did really well, and L didn't have any broken bones like she got in the dressage show earlier this year.

Tomorrow we're doing another Goldylocks lesson, about bodily awarness to know if we are behind, ahead or with the motion.
On a unrelated note, central Alberta has survived the awful flooding that has happened in the south (for now). Our river did rise and people living near it where warned of potential flooding. But the south has just been hammered.

Canmore is smallish mountain town a short ways out of Banff, with this small creek that runs through, my uncle owns a town house a short walk up the hill from it and due to this rain the creek has risen so high it's washed away parts of the banks and damaged houses all along its banks. Someone even said in their news interview that the damage won't be covered by the insurance companies, even though this is the type of the disaster that would fall under the "act of 'god' ", you would imagine.
This is what the creek normally looks like:





 And this is it last week, slight farther down stream:







This house is right along Cougar Creek, that's its deck hanging off of it, all the land around it has been washed way completely. 


 The Calgary Stamped grounds. They have said that "come hell or high water" the stamped will be  going ahead and the city is asking to borrow buses from other cities because the water has fucked up the LRT tracks and they will have to be completely redone.

Edmonton Journal: Timeline of Alberta Flooding
Calgary Floods Before & After photos
"9 Uplifting Moments from the Alberta Floods" (Naheed Nenshi is Calgary's mayor)
The floods in 20 photos
Bow River floods Siksika First Nation Communities
Calgary has a huge zoo that it's along the river, so they were really worried about flooding and their plan for the big cats low lying pens was to take them to the court house and use their holding cells to keep them in. Luckily, they didn't actually have to do that.

Goldielocks Jumping w/ Zander

I looooove Zander!! He was fantastic on Thursday when we were outside. I was expecting him to be pretty crazy because sometimes just riding in the outdoor ring can change everything, but he was great! He sort of reminds me of Pony when he gets going and not like Java who gets head strong and suddenly you don't have any breaks left. He is easier to trust than Java as well, for whatever reason I still can't figure out.

Our first jumping exercise was a "goldielocks" thing where we approached the jump to slow, then to fast and lastly "just right". Zander did really well, we didn't have any chips at either of the incorrect paces so even though they were slightly awkward, they were not terrible. The two warm up courses we did consisted of either left or right circles only. So the circle starts at A goes over 1, completes at A and then down around over 2,3 and down to C to start that last circle over 4.

Small jumps, but I got in trouble a few times for giving to much release over such tiny jumps. Ooops, same problem last time.

When we had to trot to swap leads though he rips his head up, he could knock your teeth out if you weren't sitting up properly, so that's not good. He's saddle must not be fitting properly because he's got one of those awful foam pads underneath it. They just make the saddle even tighter and fit worse, so maybe it pinches or something during the downward transition. But since he's owned by K I don't know what, if anything, I can do about it. we used on Diesel and look what happened with him. Although there's no way to know if that was from the foam pad or not.

Here are the two full courses we did, course one has eleven jumps in it, jump one is the one we practiced different canter speeds over. We started with the warm up circles to the right, then over the 3 strides (we had some problems with getting a good take off over the 2nd jump in it) and then do the circles over the left.

Kokanee news: he has made it home safely to BC and was reunited with Roxy.

I finally took a photo of the tall boots I bought from L, they're just an old model of the Ariat heritage line, sadly I'm going to have to get them stretched and possibly have the calves adjusted because I can't zip them up any more than just under half way. She says they must have shrunk a bit sitting in the cold garage all winter. They are fairly well broke in, so once they fit getting ankle blisters won't be a problem. I hate having such wide calves, it makes trying to find and fit tall boots the biggest pain in the ass.
Now I have to figure out what to do about leasing. It's only an extra $40 a month to get four extra rides, the only problem is work. Having two jobs = having to mangers who seem to go out of their way to screw up plans. ie. Oh, you can't work Thursday evenings because you're at the barn? Here, work the next 3 Thursday evenings in a row plus all the Saturday mornings just to make absolutely sure you can't see your horse! t('-'t) (can you see the little face? the t's are his arms and middle fingers). I'm not so sure if the extra money from the 2nd liquor store is actually worth it. I'll quit by the start of August i think. Maybe I'll be able to get in at least one small local show before fall.