Ernie likes cookies, too. Ernie REALLY likes cookies. I used this fact to torture him a little bit today.
Me: Ernie, want a cookie?
Ernie: Cookie?
Me: Yes, Ernie, cookie.
Ernie: Where cookie?
I didn't really have any cookies, but he did get some nummy apple treats. I've been looking up homemade horse treat recipes in the past couple weeks because I'm running out of things to bribe both horses to do stretches with: carrots are expensive, and forget store-bought horse treats. A small bag that lasts you a week with two horses costs $10 or more, and I just don't have that kind of money. The trouble is finding ones that don't require molasses, because Ernie's allergic to it. Almost every recipe I find requires molasses in order for everything to stick together. Apples are cheap, but they don't last all that long and are juicy and kind of messy and require cutting and such to feed them, unless you're LittleBig Mare in which case you take the whole thing in your teeth and bang it against your feed tub until it gets shredded.
I worked LBM for the first time in almost a week today. She was feeling pretty fresh; as soon as the arena door shut she felt it would be acceptable to yank back on the leadline to try and take off. "Nuh-uh" was my answer to that. She got her run-around time (my trainer calls it "yard time", especially when they've been cooped up in the barn because of whether) during which she bucked, squealed, and bucked some more. What's lovely about this mare is if you let her get her demons out beforehand, she's mellow as a pear when you ask her to go to work. "Bigger trot? I can do bigger trot!" she says.
Ernie, on the other hand, was dead quiet on the lunge and almost hard to get forward, and then when I got on him decided he wanted to play racehorse and go 80mph around the ring. I said no with a stream of very strong half halts, to which he gave me the hoof and threw his head in the air and did the little sideways scoot thing he does when he gets pissy. I got 30 seconds of long and low where I actually felt him reach to the bit and called it quits after that. No need to fight with this horse.
We're supposed to get a pretty big storm tomorrow into Monday, which excites me because we are the only area in the state that has no snow right now, and I want to go skiing something awful. It's the one reason I like winter: somehow I can motivate myself to get out onto a mountain and go zooming through the cold air, but getting out to the barn can be a task. Hmm..
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