Freestyle L2..Pass 2+

Well Folks….I did it. I taped my Freestyle L2 audition and sent it in today. That’s right. I took Rose out, after not touching her for about 4-5months, and hopped on and taped it. Love being a gold member. No stress, just tape it and send it in. If I don’t pass…..I am not out $50 that I have to pay again with a resubmission, and I will get some feed back on what I should work on. Though I know what I need to work on. A LOT! I did it more for my fear makeover than my levels journey. Rose was a good sport, then she had a little LBE fit, then she got with the program. I can’t believe I used a bareback pad either. I basically just hopped on to have a little fun and see if I could do it. The hardest part was clamoring up onto the barrel to mount her. THANK GOD she didn’t move. It is hard to see in the video, but that barrel was not very sturdy. I was a little shaky at first, but my balance came back real quick. She has a wide enough back for me ride bareback on, unlike Snookie, whom is like riding a 2x4. Rose hates to be saddled, and boy was she voicing her opinion about it. I played Linda’s game that she plays with Allure, where she plays with his mouth more than he wants her to. Smacking her will only start a HUGE fight. She is very defensive about being saddled….Oddly….sometimes I even give her a cookie….it blows her mind. I don’t do it all the time though because I don’t want to set up a habit. The other thing I do with her, with the bareback pad is….
I reach under and grab the girth and then the billet with the same hand, so it is snug, and if she gives a dirty look or tries to bite me (almost a guarantee if we haven’t ridden in a while) I start to make the pad VERY annoying, sliding the whole thing around, bouncing the girth on her belly, pulling down on the pad….what ever I can do to make it annoying. As soon as her face softens, I stop. Basically she can be nice and I will be nice and saddle her with my very softest savvy….But if she wants to be a witch, it will be worse than she fears. And I always finish with a very annoying muzzle rub. This process is what worked, after many months of trial and error on a very defensive, claustrophobic extreme LBE!
She was really good on my mounting though…..also a big claustrophobic moment for her…usually. But she didn’t seem to mind much….that was good. We practiced the things I would want to do for the audition, and she got a little hard to steer. She is so sensitive, that if one side of your body squeezes just a hair more than the other, she will side pass, turn or bend in half. So then she started dive bombing things…..she likes to make me think she is going to jump something so I will stop asking her to work…..she knows I will stop her as I am too chicken to jump. Viola….she is super horse that doesn’t have to do any thing at all, and I am the low life human who loses again. So, we worked thru a few of those, got out my tummy butterflies about trotting bareback…..she has an amazingly swinging back and if I am not careful, I’ll bounce right off. But I didn’t….Yeah! She definitely needs some mastery in the porcupine and driving on the hind end, especially on the left side. I noticed that last year when we played together. So I will be focusing a lot of attention on that. But for this audition, I just focused on the relationship over the compulsories, and just doing it. Hoping that we would be able to complete all the things on the list before we ran out of our 10 min camera time….I did NOT want to have to scramble my way back up onto that barrel! So I put the video on my audition page. I should know in less than 6 weeks if I passed. And I couldn’t be happier that daylight saving is this weekend. The sky is black just around 7 pm now, so that means in one week, I will be able to do some serious playing after work during the week. Weather permitting of course. Right now, there just isn’t much time after a commute, wardrobe change and hugs n kisses for the family. So check out the video….nothing pretty…but it is more for my soul than my skills!
Savvy On
Michelle

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