A Day Without Stirrups

I was inspired by L. Williams at Viva Carlos to try a day without stirrups.  Umm.  I have massive appreciation for this activity now!  I am exhausted!  And to be perfectly fair, I was not even capable of posting without stirrups so all I did was sitting trot and cantering (with lots of walk breaks in between!).  I think that it will definitely be a good exercise to incorporate into my weekly routine so I think that Thursdays are going to become my one ride a week without stirrups since it's always a shorter ride anyway, and then I will just do a bit of stirrupless work on the other days (depending on how much pain I am in every day afterwards).

Hello, Handsome

Because my ride was more me-focused instead of Walker-focused, I decided to do a little bit of groundwork/free lunging/join-up with the little bugger after I was done riding.  I did a little impromptu showmanship work with him while he was still tacked, but he was getting pretty lazy.  I decided to untack him and free lunge him (without his halter or anything - good thing I trust him!).  We have a bunch of hay in our arena down at one end, so the exercise quickly became an exercise in moving his feet, making him change directions, and most importantly, trying to keep him away from the hay pile.  I would try to keep him down at the other end of the arena, and when he was cantering along the rail, I would get him to change directions a billion times so that he could never make it back to the hay.  This perturbed him to no end, and so he would try to dodge me and the lunge whip at a rocket ship speed, galloping like a wild thing down the rail to get past me before I could get in front of him with the whip.  I wish I had caught all this on camera because it was pretty hilarious, but after about 5 - 10 minutes, he puffed a big breath of air and then trotted over to me defeated.  After that, he was more than willing to let me be the leader, and I walked him around the arena without a lead line for a few minutes before I took him down to his stall for supper.  Once again, thank god I trust him, because I didn't put his bridle back on.  I just walked him down the hall halter-less and bridle-less to his stall.  Like any horse, he's more than willing to let you be his leader if you earn it, but he'd much rather be the boss than you!

My barn owner stopped by while I was getting Walker's supper, and she complimented me again on the progress Walker has made, especially with regards to his physique.  As I've said before, I often think that she doesn't have that much faith in me (for whatever reason), so I appreciate every little compliment I get from her!

Unfortunately, with all this warm weather we've been getting - well, relatively warm weather anyway - the horses haven't been getting outside.  Warm weather in the winter is not a good thing.  It melts the snow, and when the temperature inevitably drops again, it freezes into ice.  There is a nice sheet of ice lying in wait underneath the snow everywhere around the barn, and apparently one of the other barns in our area had to put a horse down this week who had slipped on the ice.  :S  Needless to say, I'd rather Walker be safe and cooped up than dangerous and free.