Tax

I updated on Promise and then I felt bad. I should share how well Tax is doing too.

Come on...how could anyone not love this face? Remember I said that when I post those trail pics and you get a nice view of his teeth.

The truth is as regal as he looks here, he is a gigantic dork! And I do mean gigantic. That top rail behind him is probably about 5 feet.

He just got a bath because that white tail NEVER stays white. Filthy beast.

But he's riding well. His trot is fantasic and he's learning to really move off my legs. I'm teaching him how to do a roll back at the walk and next we're going to try a trot. We've been riding grids with trot poles and two cross rails at the end and he's moving through them nicely at a trot with a canter depart at the end. He's not balancing well enough at the canter to try cantering a line yet so we're taking it slow.

I decided to see if I could run him until he was tired enough to slow down the other night. What an idea.... After a half an hour at a hand gallop in two point I was certainly slowing down but he sure wasn't. After that I tried walking down the long side of the area, rolling back to change directions and then cuing the canter. My goal was to get him to stop before the end of the arena. Yeah, we'll keep working on it. The nice thing though is I feel secure on Tax. I don't think I've ever gone so fast on a horse in my life but you can tell he's listening, and he's not being mean. I think we scared one of the other boarders who kept asking if I wanted her to shut the gate but when he's getting to run he's not even looking at the gate (even though it was dinner time). I will say that this gallop at least felt much balanced than he has been in the past.

So we're going to keep working on roll backs, lots of transitions and hill work on the trail rides. This last trail ride he seemed to be working off his hind more going down hills which is good. He also didn't prance or jig a single step. We did learn that cows are not so scary but squirrels are cause to stop and let Promise lead just in case they might try to eat a horse. Lizards are also concerning because they move far too fast. Wooden bridges though are no big deal and he walks happily across them. Silly thoroughbred.

To any readers have a wonderful Mother's Day!

Promise

This is just about the best thing ever. When we first got Promise he wouldn't come anywhere near his stall if you were in it. A couple of weekends ago I was taking a pic of him in his paddock from inside his stall.

You can see he felt just fine about joining me.

Here's another of our pretty boy. We realized recently when he belted out a loud whinny that we'd never heard him make noise before. He was so quiet and worried all the time. He even got annoyed at a bath the other day and started tossing his head. It's so good to see him finally acting like a normal horse and not one that's living in fear all of the time.

He's going to make a pretty awesome trail horse. Nothing spooks him. He likes to be in the lead, and tolerates Tax's head right up his hiney. But he also doesn't mind following Tax when we canter up hills so that Tax doesn't feel like it's a race and get too competitive. He has just enough spunkiness to be a blast. Now, if we can just convince him to let the farrier put shoes on him so gravel doesn't hurt his toes...

I have pics of our last trail ride I need to post. Both of the boys were so good.