I felt really productive on Thursday. Showed up at 10 and swept/turned Lady and Papillon out in the pasture. Colonel absolutely flipped out at that. He was screaming for them, screaming and staring at me, running in and out of his stall, and banging on the door to try and open it. Poor guy hasn't really been eating, but it's showing up in his mental state rather than his physical. Lady and Papillon kicked it up a little bit but mostly stuffed their faces.

Brought them. Tessa's mom was out of town and asked Robert to lunge her, so he asked me to lunge her. She was extremely mistrustful of me haltering her, but she's pretty calm and quiet. Didn't want to walk at first so we did some trotting, and then she relaxed. She knows ropework better than lunging, I think, but I did a little of that with Claire so it worked out just fine. Put her back just in time to help Jerry unharness Imp. Once that was done I grabbed Luca and harnessed him up to go out in the field. We had a nice drive with Robert, he was pretty full of himself but well behaved overall. He is standing so much better, it's unbelievable. Rinsed him off and went to lunch. Robert took a long lunch. I turned out Colonel and Libby while I ate.

So I got dressed and rode Niki. She was, well, pretty terrible at first, but improved by leaps and bounds (occasionally literally, but not the "improving" part). Jessi and Bella and their entourage came in at one point and she was very upset about that. Our circles got much worse. So I pulled her off of the rail, because that's where she's been going crooked, and we did a 10-15m circle at the far end of the arena for a long time. We worked on bending and following her head, and not popping her shoulder out. She actually got pretty good at that, did a brief spook when Bella left, but kept working just fine. I rode her back to the crossties and Jessi asked if I was going out in the field. Um, no. Two green horses, a green rider, and a rider who's nervous about riding in the field is NOT a good combination. Plus I had a lesson with Robert anyways.

We did the trot and canter poles again. He's definitely getting the idea, but still wants to cut in and drop his shoulder. We did 10m canter circles whenever he wanted to do that, and he started getting nice and balanced. He picked up the wrong lead a lot, though. We need to work on bending. Robert was pleased by his progress but I was insanely frustrated (largely from not drinking any water and going straight from Niki to Luca). He made up for it by being cute. I was trying to demonstrate to Robert that while I was holding Luca towards the rail after the canter poles, it was because I was trying to make him go straight, and if I let him go he would drop his shoulder and run towards the gate. Instead, we cantered over the poles, he dropped his shoulder and cut the corner (it was UGLY), and aimed straight for the trot poles and cantered over those. That restored my good humor immediately. He's just a weird guy.

But I still didn't feel accomplished. So I asked Robert to look out for just one of us coming back, and rode Luca out in the field. We just walked around one circuit, but he was really good. We crossed the bridge across the creek, which I was a little nervous about (do not want to get dunked in beaver water), even though he's done it a billion times. Halfway across his head came up and he did a plant-all-four-feet spook. Wonderful! I saw the deer bounding away from us. I thought that was a pretty fair call on his part, especially as he moved on calmly. He also did a little sidesteppy trotty thing when something moved in the bushes next to us, but again, fair call. We did the water crossing too, and once I reminded him he wasn't supposed to trot up it he was fine.

I rode Keno with a saddle. That was mediocre. He gets weird cantering in the arena. He's much better in the little dressage one outside. He was busy eyeing Sunny and sticking his head up in the air as much as his short little neck will allow. We got a nice trot though, once we went over the trot poles. I guess I should hop on him more often and give him a real work.

Four horses worked, one of them twice, and four horses turned out. Woohoo!