Goofball and Escape Artist

He tried to eat my hat

Walker escaped his stall today.  I am too trustworthy.  I left the door unlatched and was literally sitting 3 feet away from the stall when he rapidly threw open the door and made a break for it.  Luckily, all the barn doors were closed so he quickly discovered that there was nowhere to go.  He had no halter on so he tried to make it difficult for me to catch him, but he finally succumbed to me when he realized that he was not getting to go for an extended walk around the property after all.  Perhaps I should invest in one of those stall guard things.

He also destroyed a few of my brushes.  This is not his fault.  He is curious and very playful, and since I think it's "so cute", I let him play with them.  He finds this wonderful, and once I give him one, he automatically assumes that they all belong to him.  He likes to throw them in the air, chew on them, and drop them in his water bucket.  The orange soft brush is officially dead.  Luckily, orange is not his colour and it just gives me a good excuse to buy him some new ones this weekend!

Today we had a nice long ride alone at the barn.  I did a lot of bending and made him do a ton of circles bent to the inside.  He hates bending, and it drives me crazy.  Usually, if I can get him to bend, he will not keep the bend for the entire circle or else I find it difficult to keep him turning and not pushing out too much expanding the circles.  He's so stiff on his bad side that he gets really perturbed when we do this exercise.  I also worked on some simple lead changes.  I would lope a circle and then come to a full halt in the center, change directions, and lope off.  We could use some work cantering from a halt, but he was generally not too bad at it.  I think I did them for too long though because after awhile he started picking up the wrong lead so I moved on.

We also trotted a crossrail today again.  I decided to take my instructor's advice and just trot him over it a maximum of maybe 5 times in each direction so that he doesn't grow sour with jumping.  Since I'm not really going over them that many times, I can really work on my position, and I felt pretty good about it today.  I briefly debated trying to canter him over it again but I decided to end on a good note.  I think I am going to see if I can talk my instructor into trying to canter them the next time we have a lesson.  She's being so thorough about teaching me to jump which is absolutely amazing, but of course, I'm impatient!  I've already cantered him over crossrails before (haphazardly, at least), so I'd really like to do it with her watching so she can critique me.  Other than that, we trotted a few pole patterns on the ground for warm-up before jumping, and I did about 10 minutes of no stirrup work.  I would've did it for longer but I was already sore from yesterday and I have plans tonight so I wanted to make sure that I would still be able to walk!

Tomorrow he is getting the day off because I am going shopping with my mother and staying the night at my friend J's apartment.  It's J's birthday, and she is like a little sister to me so we have a fun filled night of drinking ahead of us.  I am going to try to make it to the barn on Sunday night, so hopefully I don't do too much damage to myself tomorrow!  The last time I went to visit her for her birthday, I slipped on the ice and fell straight on my rear end and could barely walk the next day.  Birthdays shouldn't be allowed in the winter!  They are dangerous!

Inspecting which brush he'd like to play with

Choosing his favorite to chew on

Putting it in his stall

Throwing it in his water bucket for me :S

I think it may be time to invest in some chew toys or things to keep him occupied...