Windy Saturday

I was able to make it out to the barn again this weekend and it was really nice out today. No one was around and all the horses were standing in the paddock looking pretty bored. I brought my real camera with this time. I wasn't certain what I wanted to do so I started with grooming Axel. It was way too nice out to be in the barn and there were too many "helpers" standing around so I took Axel out to the yard. That way he was able to graze and help mow the lawn while I groomed. He's still looking pretty good. The tiniest bit tender on that back foot but walks around just fine. He's still getting scabs on his legs from the mud fever but that should start going away now that the mud is gone. He could have used a good scrubbing but I guess I'll have to do that another time. When I was done with Axel I grabbed Cody and groomed him in the same place. He's not quite as concerned with his herd when there's lush green grass in front of him. He wasn't too pleased to pick up his feet while he grazed however. I'm always wary to push my luck too far with Cody, I don't want him to shut down completely. I decided to do some ground work in the side pasture to see where he was at. We just did a few circles and he seemed pretty calm about it. We even tried the pedestal. He got right up to it but couldn't quite figure out what I wanted and ended up banging his knees on it trying to side step around it instead of taking a step up.

Since he was being pretty good I tied him up and grabbed my saddle and a mounting block. On the trail Cody can tend to be very distracted and stop paying attention to his rider completely. In the side pasture he's half distracted but will pay attention to the rider at least half the time. And when he's paying attention even just half way he's a pretty awesome horse. He's super sensitive and we were doing serpentines with just leg and seat aids. It took a little while to get him to turn both directions but he loosened up when he figured out we weren't traveling away from the herd at all, just doing circles and patterns. At the end of the ride he willingly walked to the far side of the trees where he couldn't see his herd. I dismounted and loosened the girth there as a reward.

I'm still trying to figure out a way to work on the standing still issue. I did try one trick, after riding I led him into the mounting block and asked for him to stand. I started untacking him there. As soon as he moved I put the saddle back on and walked him back to the block and asked for a halt again. This time he stood and I removed the saddle. He's good at standing for dismounting so that method of teaching him to stand still doesn't work too well, but the untacking might be a method that I can keep working on.

After that I hung around for a while and shot some photos with my camera. I let everyone into the round pen to eat the dandilions. I wasn't sure what the plan was for letting the horses in the pasture so I didn't want to step on any toes there, but I figured the round pen for a few minutes wasn't a big deal. All the horses were pretty happy about it. Axel was a bit pokey and couldn't find the door to the round pen. He ended up following me around quite a bit. I found a few itchy spots that he was more than happy to let me scratch, he was being kind of a puppy dog. It was nice spending some time with him.