Jet Lag,

Whew. After 27 hours of traveling, I got home last night at about 9. The time difference between here and Taipei is 15 hours, so I am all kinds of tired. My mom finally managed to drag me out of bed at about 10, after much grumbling and complaining on my part.

Then she dragged me out to the barn to visit McKinna, saying how it would wake me up and be good for me. Ha! As if walking around out at the barn could really wake me up when it was supposed to be about 4 in the morning.

She was right, of course. I know, it's shocking.

We had a nice visit with McKinna, who quite thoroughly let us know that she'd rather not be ridden today. (She does this thing where she stands in her stall and turns and walks out into her run whenever you approach...) Lucky for her, I didn't feel like riding either! So we just hung out. And I held the target in her run from outside, just to see if she remembered - she looked at me for a second, then walked up and stuck her nose right on it. She got a click and a sugar cube for that one.

I think I'll play around with some clicker work tomorrow. I was working on the bow before I left, but it just wasn't quite connecting with her, so I've decided to try a different exercise to help her realize that it's the click that marks the action, AND that she doesn't get it just by hanging around me. I'm going to set a cone several feet away from me (we'll start targeting it closer), so that when she touches it and I click, she has to turn and walk to me to receive her treat. Then she'll have to turn and walk back to the cone to touch it to trigger another click.

I'm hoping this will help clear up the process for both of us, and then we can move on to more complex work.

For the rest of the week, it's just light riding. I think I'll go for some nice hacks out in the big hay field. Then I head up to Aspen Farms to groom for Devin at the event. It's my last grooming event of the year! I learned an awful lot about care and keeping of event horses while working for Devin, so I'm really glad I did it. Still, by the time school rolls around I think it will be a nice break from my hectic summer!

I've got the eventing rally coming up in a few weeks, which is sort of the last hurrah of our summer. Hopefully I can get some jumping lessons in between now and then! I'll wind things down during fall term (which is, inevitably, what always happens - then I feel guilty for not riding as much), then come back into work during the winter with some serious dressage training as well as start up again with jumping. 

Anyway - thought I'd let you guys know that I'm back and posting should return to more frequent levels now!