Today Sara and I had time to go play with the horses today. The weather was ideal, though a bit breezy. The horses were waiting for us, which felt good.
Our warm-ups were fine. I see a lot of progress in Apache and me.
But once we went off riding, everyone went goofy. Fiona was hilarious, actually. She scooted around, kicked up her little heels, bucked an generally made mayhem. She tried to get the horses to chase her.
Spice was also jumpy as heck, requiring a lot of work by Sara. She threw her head and wanted to canter and run nervously. So, Sara kept her going until she cantered calmly. By then she was all sweated up.
Meanwhile, Mr. Perfect, Apache, was also hepped up for some reason. He wanted to run hither and yon, screech to a halt and eat grass, and go in whatever direction I didn’t want to go. That was annoying, but I knew I needed to not mirror his emotions and get upset.
Suddenly we were back to normal! We had a really nice walk around the fence line, then visited with the neighbors at the cabin. Everyone was well behaved. Fiona was especially good.
I started breathing more slowly and talking to him. I got him going in figure 8s and he settled. When we went into the other pasture I concentrated on aiming at objects and relaxing. It worked.
It was nice of Yanelly to take pictures of us, because we don’t get many. She wants riding lessons. That makes me want another horse, for trail riding fun!
I’m glad we worked through the horse agitation. They were so sweet when we were finished. Fiona begged me to rub her all over and did her little donkey hug on me.
I feel so good! Oh, and later we put up a Christmas tree in the big window at the Pope Residence. It will really look good once we turn the electricity on!
The Hermits' Rest 