Ernie's continued to enjoy his easy existence the past few days, which has involved half hour walks, lots of stretching, cookies, carrots and grooming. He's already looking much, MUCH better than he did walking off the trailer a week and a half ago. Even Donnie mentioned how he's starting to fill out. We went outside yesterday to enjoy a short trail ride (*GASP*), which got cut even shorter by the number of flies that swarmed his face the minute we stepped outside the arena. I want to try and mix thing up as much as I can, given how boring arena work is, and given how RIDICULOUSLY DEEP the arena footing is. I can't have Ernie trudging through 6 inches of sand footing; it's too difficult given his injury history, and he's better off on harder surfaces anyway.
That's what I did last week. I haven't had as much time to do any work on the barn this past week because of preseason, but we haven't needed to. Right now, the co-op barn is officially full. We have three new boarders, three new horses, and all of the girls seem to be very knowledgeable and friendly. I helped one, a girl from Hyde Park, Mass., move her stuff in a few days ago. The other two came the next day. One of the horses, "Taz", who appears to be some kind of Morgan, busted through his stall his first night there, dumped a wheelbarrow of sawdust, and was found grazing on the lawn at 11:30PM. The thinking is that a wild dog that's been seen near the woods spooked him, and he just didn't stop running once he got into his stall.
Other than that, things have been pretty quiet. Both horses have settled nicely, Stella has gotten comments up the wazoo about how cute, adorable, pretty, beautiful she is, how well she moves, how well trained she is for a 3 year old, how much fun she looks...you name it, I've heard it. She's no longer the collection of horse parts she was when I bought her. She's turning into an honest-to-God, real horse! I haven't sat on her since she came back to school, but I plan on it either today or tomorrow. I've been allowing her to acclimate; I want her calm in the arena before I sit on her. Yesterday she was PERFECT: no lunging beforehand required. We went right to work on the long-lining while another horse was being driven in the arena. Leslie, the barn owner, came into the arena and said that if I slapped breaching and a crupper on her now, she'd be ready to back to a carriage in a week tops. I decided to take her out and ground drive her down the driveway. Donnie watched me drive her, and even he said what a cute little carriage horse she'd make.
Sadly, I don't want to drive. I know she'd make a fantastic carriage horse; she's smart, calm, obedient, sensitive, everything you want in a driving horse. All those things also make a fantastic dressage horse, too :)
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