Sunny Saturday

What a great day we had today! Sunny and very warm and we got a lot done. Ted was working hard in his shop and I was hardly working!- Well, I don't consider it work if it has to do with horses.
Beamer got new footing in his stall today. A good layer of pea gravel....

followed by some rubber matting . The white stuff is limestone dust, this used to be conveyor belting.

 On top of that, some fresh straw bedding :

 and it's all ready for the Lord of the Valley!

For meee? Really?

Awwwright!

If you are wondering about the blanket when he hasn't worn one all winter, it is just to keep him clean- I gave him a bath a few days ago. This is his waterproof sheet- perfect for rolling in the mud spots that he always manages to find. 

It was another good day for Rio too. Today's Scary Object was a bag of cans, and it took much less time than yesterday's HEO (Horse Eating Obect) for him to accept it. In no time I could throw it over his neck, saddle, hips, and pull it off to kerplunk on the ground, so on to the next lesson; back to the L. This time we came at it from the other drection, and he had to rethink everything. This time instead of turning to his right, he had to turn to his left, in reverse. I guess it uses a different set of braincells  ;0)

It took a little longer, we had to break it down into baby steps: walk to the corner, back out, then walk to the corner and take a quarter turn with his front end, then undo the quarter turn and back out, and so on until untill he put it all together in one clean back through. 

Then it was some work on the sidepass; he does really well with a chest level barrier- but not so good asking for the sidepass with a log between his front and back feet, he got too worried about the log, so we went to asking for the sidepass with the log directly in front of his feet.He could handle that!Once he is solid on that we will ask him to step over the log with his front feet for the sidepass. With these big colts it's really tough to think of them as just babies, and I think that Rio is doing really good in the thinking department- you can just see him trying so hard to figure out what Shayla is asking him to do, and she does a pretty good job of making her cues clear for him.

After all that ground work- riding time! Back out to the hayfield, with a relaxed Rio and a smiling Shayla.

The get down rope that I lead with isn't long enough for me to get far enough back to get all of Rio in the photo. (It will be nice when he is done growing and levels out!)

He aced the water crossing, in fact he headed straight over to the next one!

After this, we headed over to the dirt road, and went down that, past the end of our place. Rio was really enjoying his outing, and wasn't concerned at all when the other horses called out to him.

Even though it isn't me up on that horse, I am sure proud of him- I has a happy!