Finally a day with the ponies

Is it seriously Christmas Eve already?? YIKES.

Anyway, this past Saturday I was finally able to escape for a couple hours to the barn for some much needed R&R horse time.  Man oh man did I ever need it.  I had only been out to the barn twice since Thanksgiving, and each time only for about 15 minutes of feeding treats and giving cookies before I had to scram to work or school or homework or something.

So I bundled up and took the mutts with me and went to have some fun.

Fiona is ready!

After teaching a quick lesson I pulled little Sassy pony out.  Rosemary wants me to try and get her going in harness.  She is their solid (yet ornery) lesson pony and we both think that she'll be significantly less skittish than Shadow in the cart and thus a safer option for farm school activities.  I grabbed her, put the harness on, and went to town... and about got pulled off my feet... !!!  The little snot is a freight train!  I messed around with bits and adding a noseband and got some mixed success.  She should be fun though (ha ha!).

At least she's cute!

Then it was time for Cash.

HE WAS SO GOOD!!

Granted I lunged him for quite a bit, haha. I'll havta get the video up, he has finally figured out how to MOVE and my word, he has an amazing trot.  Fiona kept ducking in and out under the fence and each time she'd do it her jacket would rub on the bottom rail and make this loud "sshhhrrrppppp" noise which Cash was not a fan of.  He was constantly on the lookout for that noisy pink dog.  

But still, he was a rockstar!  He settled down however just wanted to keep going, going, going, going on the lunge.  Energy much?  And when I got on him he felt so solid.  I'm finally starting to trust this horse a bit and it's an awesome feeling.  In turn, he's starting to trust me and is questioning my decisions less and less. 

Man I had missed this view!

After toodling around in the arena a bit I opened the gate and we went for an extra-mini trail ride out to the driveway, a quick turnaround on the road and back to the tie rail.  We probably went a whole of 15 yards one way!  But, he didn't freak out, he didn't snort, he didn't try and rush back, he didn't try and spin... I felt in total control and never once questioned the fact that I was riding him in only a hackamore.  Considering how he's previously behaved outside of the arena I was one proud momma by the time I was off his back.

Cookie monster! I love this beast, I really do.

So yeah.  Christmas is now upon us and starting tomorrow I have four days off in a row and plan to get my fair share of horsey time in.  Oh yeah and the Winter Solstice is past and we can now make our way back towards the sun, that always makes me happy. 

OH! And on a completely non-horse related note but still pertinent to blogger-dom: GOOGLE READER LIVES!!! You know how your phone will do those auto-app-updates thing?  Well, apparently gReader got updated (I had never removed it from my phone) and I was flipping through available widgets the other day and noticed some gReader feed widgets and though "Odd, I never saw those before." So I decided to pull up the gReader app and lo and behold, there be my rss feeds, all happy and back to how they used to be. Apparently it's listed as an "unofficial Google Reader for Android", huh.  Regardless, it made my day. (I'm sure I'm probably one of the last people to get this memo but oh well.)