Sheesh. One busy week and a girl gets left behind on the blogging front. Not that I haven’t been busy or anything…just running a lot of errands. And going to SFWA readings. And all sorts of other stuff. Including working on a detailed outline for the Netwalk’s Children novella. Children will be the most recent of all the work I’ve put up (well, except for Netwalk’s Descendants and I haven’t got that story in place yet). With this novella I’m moving past things that are three to six years old and am really breaking new ground with this series. I’m excited. Hopefully others will get excited about it, too. Given where it comes in the publishing schedule, I should have enough backlog already up that I can get aggressively behind promoting it. It might not be ready for Norwescon, may be ready for Miscon promotion (still debating about going to Norwescon but thinking I may need to do it).
Mocha’s now settled back into the regular working schedule. Monday afternoon she was still just a wee bit edgy and not quite back into her working head space. We needed to Have Discussions right off the bat when I was stretching her forelegs.
Me: Give me the right foot, please (actual, me placing myself next to right foreleg, clucking).
Mocha: How about this one instead (actual, picking up left foot)?
Me: No. This foot.
Mocha: I really would much rather pick up this foot. It’s–ew–full of dirt and I don’t want to stand on it.
Me: This foot.
Mocha: Pick this foot out first, please? I’d much rather do this foot.
Me: Look, Princess, it’s not going to hurt you to stand on that foot. Hundreds of thousands of poor, deprived horses do this ALL THE TIME. WITHOUT A FUSS. THIS FOOT. NOW.
Mocha: Le sigh. (picks up right foot).
Besides that little bit of entertaining nonverbal exchanges wherein the Princess was being The Princess (how can I stand unbalanced on a dirty foot!!), she was off in her balance and I was off in my back, dang near shot out of the stirrup in pain when I mounted. However, throughout the course of the ride I figured out how to ease the pain and ended up feeling pretty good at the end.
So tonight, she was all working horse. No-nonsense, back to her usual self. She did appear to have herding on the mind, tracked one of the dogs who didn’t move out of her way at a trot until the very last moment, and then a crabby young horse in schooling on the lunge brought out Irritated Cowhorse Mare Ready to Herd Bad Behaving Kid. Lots of energy, definitely wanted to finish out the ride with galloping thunder around the arena, head low and relaxed on the long rein. Mellow flying changes–I hadn’t planned to do them, but she was moving smoothly so we tried them, and she executed them in flawless, relaxed mode. Yay.
I wuv my horsie.
