Saturday, May 28, 2011

What do you know?

I love long weekends! Especially when the weather is as gorgeous as it has been.

Today was a perfect balance of getting some work done and relaxing with the pony. I had a couple of goals for the day, one of which was just hanging out with the herd. The other was to revisit some of the things we left off with last weekend.

Gobie continues to be a very good boy for grooming. He's got absolutely no problem with standing still for having his hair combed, being brushed, having his face cleaned, and so on. He's also very good about having his ears fussed with.

He's looking pretty shiny if I do say so myself!

A great looking dorsal stripe right down his back.

Cute wrinkled muzzle! Not looking too sunburned yet.

I noticed he had a little rub or cut or something near his eye so I put a little ointment on it hoping that will help it heal and keep the flies away. I also revisited the fly spray. He was about a thousand times better with getting sprayed than the first time. He still wanted to get away from it (particularly on his left side) but he was much less fearful and gave up pretty easily.

I also wanted to see how much he knew as far as moving away from pressure. So I had my little riding crop out. I used it just as an extension of my hand, and first made sure to just rub him with it. I know already that he's got a good "back" so we started there. First a little pressure on his chest, and if he didn't more, then some tapping. He did great! Next was turning on the forehand. To my surprise he did it like a pro, pivoting on his left front foot and his right front foot! We tried sidepassing, too but that was a bit more difficult. He was also getting pretty lazy about it at this point, too, deciding he would do these things reeeeally slowly. I also tried to see if he knew anything about lunging and I'm pretty sure he doesn't. But he was extremely willing and for the short time that we tried he seemed to be catching on to what it was about.

I gotta say I'm pretty glad that this pony seems to be about as lazy as I am. While I definitely think it's good mental exercise to do some training, and absolutely necessary to teach him the basics of how to be a well behaved horse around people, my favorite part about owning a horses is just hanging out. Especially when I've got such an obviously people friendly pony.

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