Frisky Pony

Kezi is definitely in heat again, and both horses were feeling frisky today. I went out to get Gambler and they both ran away from me bucking and rearing. Then Gambler proceeded to chase Kezi all over the pasture. At this point, I knew that I was not going to get them into the barn without grain, so I brought one of their buckets outside and shook it. That got their attention! Both of them took off cantering/galloping (I wasn't looking very closely) toward the barn.

What's that? You want us to come in?

Maybe some other time.

As you can see, we're a tad busy racing around like madhorses.

Trotting over to check out the dog.

Once they finally made their way into the barn, I left my brother to take pictures while I set up in the arena. He got some really great pics!

He just loves dogs.

When I was done setting up, I brought Gambler out to the arena.

My plan for the day was to work on the acceptance of the saddle, since he was pretty upset last time I saddled him up. However, he was really uppity from running about in the pasture, so I started out by trotting him over some poles. The little stud muffin proceeded to jump the poles instead of trot over them. 

There was one point where he spooked at something scary that I didn't see and jumped two ground poles. My brother caught it on video. If you pause while he's jumping, it's absolutely beautiful. Thankfully, that was the only spook today and he snapped out of it very quickly. 

There were a few moments when he really understood the trot pole concept and showed some great knee action.

 

Since he was jumping everything that I didn't expect him to jump, I decided to try a few little jumps. First I longed him over an itsy, bitsy cross rail and then I made it a little bigger using buckets for jump standards. The barn owner has wonderful jump standards, but they are hard to use when you are longeing because the rope gets tangled with the standard. Here is a video of the itsy, bitsy cross rail.

This is the bigger jump.

To finish the day, I let my brother longe Gambler. I was very impressed with both of them, since it was only their third time working together. My brother longed him at the trot for the first time and they both did great.