Back to work

[[Edited In]: Oh, and also, Alyssa and Keno went and walked around the field, looking quite cute.]

Today was a nice easy, but productive, day back. We turned out horses in pairs. Lady and Papillon ran around and played. It was cute. Colonel and Reno didn't interact with each other much. Colonel ran around like a fool, bucking and snorting and sliding to a stop. Star and Niki were a disappointment. Star just wanted to eat. Niki wanted to play but Star largely ignored her in favor of grass.

Star made up for her disappointing performance by running out of her stall when I was putting her back, and fled back to the pasture. So I free lunged her pretty hard. She mostly stayed in a nice circle around me, probably to stick close to the horses. I managed to get a tiny bit of sweat out of her before we put her back.

I took Colonel out to the field and he was pretty rilled up. By the time we crossed the culvert he was so fired up that I wound up sending him out on his circle early. We gradually moved our circle further away from the culvert. I managed to take the wind out of his sails a bit, and then I put him back.

There is talk of someone half leasing Papillon, so I got her out to see where she's at. Alyssa felt inspired to ride Lady, after observing that she was pretty sound in the pasture. The two mares wound up being a calming influence on each other and we both had a nice ride. Papillon was quite mellow. It probably helps that I put her in a snaffle instead of that french link that she ignores. It was a pretty thin snaffle too, by my standards. I dont feel too bad about it though because I was able to be nice and light with her now that she's not constantly jerking her head against the reins.

I got Colonel out again and we walked around the field. No spooking, no screaming, no rushing ahead of me, it was great. The only blip was when he was putting his head down to snatch grass, I wasn't paying enough attention and he stepped on his lead line. When he jerked his head up he smacked me in the butt with substantial force. He recovered his composure quite quickly though, so I am pleased.

Tuesday I'm going to try to ride all three of my horsies. I want to breeze Star some more out in the field. I want to start long trotting Colonel out in the field, and I want to put another short ride on Papillon so she'll be nice and tuned up. I like the idea of someone getting her out more. If someone else was working on her too, I could hop on her for a short ride to keep her all tuned up. She gets downright lazy if you work her consistently, but she is a round kind of lazy, so its nice.

I had a more ambitious plan for today, but I'm really happy that I wound up easing into things a little more slowly.