A Fairly Nice Saturday

Went out to the barn today to see if I could get a few things done. It started out kind of overcast but it wasn't freezing so that was good. I let Beau in the barn for his daily buffet while I went out to work in the round pen. Cody and I went to work first. I ran a brush over him quickly and got to work. He actually did the unwinding thing really well on the first try. He used to just back up instead of turning around. After that we worked on some lunging. He does pretty well but he still would rather pay attention to the other horses than me. He'll keep his eyes on me for a few circles and then he stops and watches his herd. We worked on backing up a little, and I tried to do some side passing but that didn't go very well. We also worked on giving to pressure from a rope around his legs. I've finally gotten him to back up a tiny step by wiggling the rope (ala Parelli yo-yo game) and telling him to "back."

Cody was getting bored with me at that point so I moved on to working with Axel. Axel did the unwinding thing well and even crossed his back feet over each other properly in both directions. I couldn't get him to lunge to save my life. He doesn't have much forward drive so he just spun around in circles instead. We walked over a pole a few times and then started working on our backing up. I didn't want to start with backing over the pole with his back feet so I walked him over the pole with his front feet first. Then asked him to back from there. He got it pretty well but he wouldn't pick his feet up all the way and would skim them over the pole. So we worked on that until he tuned out and I decided to stop. I ran a brush over Axel and then turned him loose, which meant he just stood there with his lip dangling. He's really dragging his feet lately, his hooves are all worn flat on the fronts. Hopefully he just needs a trim and it's not something else.

All of the horses were really listless today. They all look so bored this time of year, nothing to graze on, just standing around. I got out the blue tarp to play for a while. Everyone perked up when they saw that. Axel, Kiko, and Kalani followed me back into the round pen to see what the deal was. I left them to play with the tarp for a while while I went to put some things away. I came back out and did some more sacking out with the tarp, Kiko still jumps if you shake the tarp at her but she's getting better. After that I cleaned up the tack room, swept it out, put more feed in the bin, put away a bunch of my junk, and fixed up Cody's bridle.

The sun had come out and I wasn't inspired photographically so I decided I needed to go for a ride. Anne and her kids were maybe planning on coming out on Sunday for a ride so I decided to give Corey a try to make sure he was behaving well enough for a 10 year old to ride. So I tacked him up and down the road we went. We didn't go very far before we turned around. Corey pretty much bounced the whole way back. I half halted the whole way back with no response. Oddly enough he would halt when asked, but he would not walk. So a'bouncing we went. Goofy horse is 28 years old and he still spooks at random things. Luckily he just sprawls out before he regains his composure. He should be fine with Cody and Axel along tomorrow.