day 7

Well I barely got it in but I did it. It was a beautifully sunny day and I wanted badly to get some time in with Raven today, but I had other more important tasks to accomplish. However, at the end of the day I still was able to squeeze in an hour of work with her.
She is getting so soft to my feel in the lead or rein, even my seat and legs. I am picking up more and more on being able to push her with my seat, especially if she is collected up nice. We wnet through all the tasks rather quickly. I wanted to get to working circles with her to get her more laterally soft and then worked on trasitions with my seat and legs. She is working out well and I am refining my own horsemanship in terms of the details of riding. To give you a for instance, I was asking her to do a leg yield and to do that I have to get her prepped, by getting her head and neck shaped to the right or left (soft laterally and vertically) then if I keep my legs drapped around her like spaghetti, and my hands soft so she is collected then shift my seat just a bit to the inside off center of the saddle, then by rolling my butt under me makeing a C shape with the small of my back and pushing with my seat and adding my inside leg at the time that she is picking up her inside hind foot I can drive her hind foot across in front of her outside hind, the front doing the same thing and simply push her into the leg yield. Sounds like a lot of details and it is alot to keep in mind but that is why repetitions are needed so that I get good at it and it becomes natural.
We often think that spiritual growth as believers should just happen, but it happens the same way, with lots of repetitions of doing the right thing. Paul tells us in 1 Timothy 4 that we are to exercise ourselves in godliness. This is what he is talking about, doing the right thing so many times that it becomes the natural thing for us to do. For example, take a person who gets angry and swears everytime something goes wrong. If he has the Holy Spirit in him, for without it he cannot do this (1 Cor. 2:14), then he can consciously choose to not swear when things go wrong. He can put that off and put on controlling his mouth by choosing to think on something good at that time, like thanking God that he got a flat tire or the computer crashed.  As he does this enough, though he will have lots of failures in the process, he will find himself starting to hold his tongue and not only that but also think right and do right in the situation. There is no replacement for going through the conscious steps in the process and doing it lots of times. Horsemanship and Spiritual growth are connected.
Enough for today, hopefully more tomorrow, unless the storm actually does come.
Have a good one.