The winter months are creeping by, but still, my winter riding goals are not yet fully formed.

With my little mare Annie, my plan was to learn the basic movements of Garrocha—pole dancing with a horse! Her compact and athletic build makes little circles easy and ducking under that pole on a short horse just seems like it would work better. But alas, I am having great difficulty finding an adequate Garrocha pole (which has to be rigid, light enough to carry and about 13 feet long). Currently, I am eyeing one of my neighbor’s windsurfing masts and wondering if he would miss it….

I am seriously considering taking Eddie and Annie to the Legends of Ranching competition in April. I’ll need to decide soon because it will take me a few months to get the horses tuned up and ready to work cattle. If I decide to compete, it will make the goal-setting for these two horses easy.

For Dually, my old man (18 this year!), picking goals is more of a challenge.

First, at his age, I don’t want to do anything that would cause too much stress on his joints. Although he’d be great at Garoccha, he doesn’t need to be loping tiny circles. Plus, Dually is so well-trained that there aren’t many new skills to acquire. So I think I will work on the upper level Western Dressage tests and drill down on our accuracy and correctness.

I’ve got plenty to keep me busy through the winter months of riding indoors!