So I am barn sitting today and tomorrow.  Yikes, that is a lot of responsibility resting on my shoulders.  The morning feeding and turnout was peaceful.  The horses don’t seem to care who puts the feed in their buckets.  Just get the feed into my bucket NOW!

It is interesting to see how each of the horses maintains their stall.  Much like people, some are tidier than others.  Ike tends to poop in one spot in his stall and likes to push the sawdust to the edges of the stall to form a depression.  Ike eats all his hay so there is no leftovers to clean up in the morning.  Cigar is a slob; there is no other way to describe his stall other than a pig pen.  It takes twice as long to clean his stall because you are forced to mine for nuggets.  Hay is strewn everywhere including the water buckets.  All the other horses have their tendencies as well.

Once everyone was out and the stalls were mucked, I took the opportunity to clean out my tack box.  Pretty sure I now need some sort of booster shot for protection against mouse-borne diseases from the plethora of mouse detritus that was lurking everywhere.  But the job is done and everything is clean…for now.  At least I did not find any nests.

Popped on Ike for a 30 minute ride until we could no longer stand the dive bombing horse flies. Evil creatures.  We practiced our walk-trot transitions as well as our canter transitions.  Although it is less frequent, Ike still struggles with keeping the weight in the right place in his hind end.  Hoping as he muscles up and the topline gets stronger that the problems will fade away.  We also continue our quest for a stretch down trot.  Right now when I give a little, Ike lurches forward and gets faster and faster.  He tends to ignore the half halts once the giraffe neck is stretched so I resort to a stern, “slow down, slow, Ike, I said slow.”  That doesn’t always work either, but we will keep trying.

All was going well with day one until a small thunderstorm popped up out of nowhere.  Weenie couldn’t cope, so he hid in the barn.   One of the other geldings also had a meltdown, but it sure is challenging to get a halter on a horse that is rearing.  The storm was practically over before he let me get the halter on his head.  Silly boy.  The rest of the crew toughed it out and then promptly rolled to get a good coating of dirt for bug protection.  Pretty ponies.

The day ended well.  One more day.