Sunday, February 8, 2009

Trails with Tule, saddle for Dilly, friend rides Pepper

All told, a good day.


My good friend Michelle came down today with her boyfriend, Jared. Pepper was the first horse Jared ever rode :) He's actually getting pretty good dealing with her, too. So while I was waiting for them to arrive, I got Dillon out of the pasture. Michelle was invited to ride one of my friend at the barn's Rocky Mountain horses, so she got busy with those three beauties and I decided to put the saddle on Dillon. Now, he's been saddled before and he's had things strapped to his back before, so I wasn't worried at all, but this was the "real deal," the saddle I'll be riding him in, back cinch and everything.


And honestly I don't even think he cared. He did notice that I was getting all this equipment on him, and he didn't stand perfectly still, but he never gave any indication of being uncomfortable or upset about things.


Jared rode Pepper in the arena for a while. She wasn't horrible, but also wasn't great. The vet's coming tomorrow to do spring shots for her so I'm going to ask him to evaluate her for possible pain issues.


Tule and I had a great ride. We trotted around the arena a bit, then headed down the road. I thought two others were coming with us, Charlie and Jared, but when I got to the field that was our destination, I realized Tule and I had made it all the way there alone. This is a big step for us, because for one, I'd never ridden him down the road in that direction before, and two, we've never gone anywhere like that alone. And he did great. (I do so love my horse.)


Dillon got to make his baby face at Pepper today and it was adorable. Wish I'd had my camera out for it. I tied them across from each other and he reached over and did the open mouth baby thing for her, and she completely accepted him, no mare squeals or fussy b**** behaviors.


I had a breakthrough with another horse today as well. There are two geldings that get turned out with Dillon, that both used to be in Pepper's pasture. On April 1 they'll all go back out together, so I'm pleased that Dillon's already "in" with two of the boys he'll be pastured with in future. Well, one of them is Pepper's boyfriend Mozart (I promise, this horse is a unicorn, we just don't have the right eyes to see his horn) and the other is an appy named Moonshine. Well, Moonshine rears when anyone tries to give him wormer. I've seen it, and it's scary. I told his owner, that I thought if I worked with him on some stuff, that I might be able to do something to help that. So every day for the last week, I've been working with him, sticking my fingers in his mouth on both sides, really messing with him, and then rewarding him not every time but about half the time so he thinks there's a chance for a treat if he's good. And today it paid off. His owner came out with wormer for both boys. We decided to try in the pasture. And I walked right up to Moonshine, and got that wormer into him with almost no fuss whatsoever. It was amazing. Mozart takes his easily, but I did him too just to be friendly, but then I offered to let her do Pepper so she could get some practice on another easy horse :) She called me the horse whisperer, which made me a little uncomfortable, so I told her I was just the worm whisperer!


1 comment:

  1. Hey. I am fairly new to blogger. I have been reading your blogs and I have to say you have some wonderful horses. I especially like Dillon. He is supper cute and looks like a well behaved colt.

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