Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

Let's face it, when you have even a small dot on the map and have horses to ride, property and a home to maintain for said horses, and have to work fulltime, it can get pretty chaotic. Below is a picture of our Hay Barn that we FINALLY got a start on. It's been a long time coming and as you can see we have a ways to go before completion but our plan is to have it mostly completed before winter. For the past several years, we have managed to get by with round bales because without a barn to store them in , it's been our experience that the rounds do much better at "shedding" moisture and are overall a bit more resistant to the sometimes harsh conditions we see here . We tarp two bales to a tarp and rest each bale on on individual pallets. But there is a huge downfall. Since we fork off the feed to the horses morning and night , it makes a mess, especially in the wind. By Spring each year, we end up having large amounts of hay that has blown into our yard and we spend alot of time cleaning that up. I am looking forward to not having to deal with tarps anymore andnot having that mess next spring!

So work is one thing and will always be there. Riding is another. This past week I rode all but two nights. Friday evening I took JB up the road for a change of scenery. For the last several weeks, we have mostly been in the arena. We are both growing bored with it. Tom came along as well with his gelding Cassidy. JB moved out very well. He was very forward and free. Since Tom was along with Cassidy , JB had his work cut out for him to try to keep up with the Morgan Road Trot. Ofcourse, poor JB has to canter to keep up with Cassidy when Tom gets him into that gait but JB can definitely move when motivated! It seems as though for now we have the right things in place for JB. Between a good fitting saddle (the Duett I purchased from Mel over at Boots and Saddles, well padded easy boots and the gelding life, he is starting to feel much better it seems. Here he is pictured below pre ride Friday evening. We did 4 miles of mostly trotting. He wasn't really interested in giving me his best look and he appears a little irritable in the photo. I think he was just having a pouting moment because I had just squirted him down with lots of bug repellant.

And then there is Maggie. She is a fun horse to be around and I think she looks forward to our sessions. She seems to be a horse that does better with a lot of interaction from people. She is very personable. I have been riding her 2-3 times a week and we have moved past several of her "snit fits" as I call them. As you can see from the photo below , she isn't afraid to try new things. Tom snapped a couple photos of us working on the pedestal. This was the first time she got up with all 4 feet. The problem was getting her back off. She seemed to like it so well that everytime I got her to step off, she tried to get right back on. As i said, girls just wanna have fun I guess....