The girls and Rio stuff

Last night, all snugged down in the camper, listening for any sounds that might foretell imminent foaling, I was treated to horses snoring in 4 part harmony- I kid you not. Gussie was the percussion, with her long low grunts ending in an "ooof" . Belle chimed in with shorter staccato mid range, Beamer was the melody line, and Rio- well Rio was the bass- and he nearly drowned out the rest of them! Boy sure can snore!
At my 3 AM check, Gussie was lying down, and kept looking at her flanks, I think baby is moving into foaling position. She seems to be carrying a little lower today.

Compare this to Belle, who seems to need a Wide Load caution sign!

I sure hope they foal out soon, I just.can't.wait! I'm pretty sure they are about over it too, Gussie was pretty grumpy today.
Maybe it was just the weather or something in the air, but Rio was a little off today too; when Shayla saddled him up it was pretty obvious that he had a little hump in his back, and even though he did really well in the training session for halter, when she asked him to trot he kept blowing out on her,

So expressive, you can see by this photo that he had a li'l 'tude today

 so off to the round pen we went, to give him a chance to really work and get rid of some of that pent up energy that was keeping him from focusing.
Some free longeing , changes of direction and making him work really helped. A few sessions of doubling him into the fence, go halfway around and double again, really got him working. If I wasn't so busy admiring his rollbacks I would have had the presence of mind to take photos. But I did get a video of his lovely trot, and the nice soft stop at the end of it.

After a bit he was following Shayla around, turning and backing without any leadrope on him- join-up!
So then it was riding time. Of course he loved that, and I'm telling you he can really stride out! I had to hustle to keep up, so Shayla rated his walk back, and did some walk-trot transitions, and she is starting to ask for lateral moves too. He does these fine as ground work, and is learning to translate it to being ridden.
I wanted to take a couple of photos, so I dropped the lead rope on the ground, and stepped back for the shot- he was good, didn't move an inch.

Nice!