Sunday, July 25, 2010

Day 7, Undemanding Time and Water Crossings

It is Sunday and the heat is still staggering. My car thermostat read 99 degrees as I drove down East Cherokee Dr. at 2:30 in the afternoon. I had a three O'clock workshop with a handful of ladies at the barn. Kelsey and I have been putting the Mustangs up in stalls during the heat of the day to help them cope. Eclipse was ready to get out of his small enclosure by the time I got to the barn. I put the 22-ft line on him and joined my class hiding in the woods from the unrelenting sun. We decided to play with some of the obstacles in the wood for the first portion, then ventured out on the hill where there was a breeze to work on the teetering bridge. This was probably Eclipse's favorite session with he stood in the pasture eating grass listening to me talk... he will be doing a lot of this over the next 80 days! At one point I asked him to cross the bridge and my students had to laugh when he got to the other end and started grazing while still on the bridge. Because of the added distance between him and the ground he was having trouble reaching so to solve the problem he got down on one knee and continued to graze!

Instead of riding I opted to take Eclipse to the creek and play with water crossings with Kelsey and her filly who is doing great as well. As soon as we got to the sandy area surrounding the water crossing Eclipse could not resist the urge to roll. He flopped around for a few minutes then it was back to business. When we got to the waters edge he was not to keen on crossing by himself. Instead of forcing the issue I opted to lead him across first. To my surprise after a little resistance he opted to walk through the creek as opposed to jumping it like I expected. The embankment on the other side was a narrow trail up along a steep sandy bank. Now why it is that the steep sandy bank is more appealing the the trail beside I will never know, but sure as any thing both horses on several occasions climbed various uninviting embankments. By the end of the session we had both horses crossing the creek at several points and negotiating the embankment trails in and out.
Next on my list of things to work with ... Ponying... I hope Pi is up to the task:)

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