Birthday Boy

Chance is Six Today!

Chance's original owner emailed me today to remind me it was the boy's birthday. I gave him treats from her and some special snacks for dinner, then took him out for a photo shoot. He certainly does know how to pose for the head shots.

Below is a picture of him wearing the Ansur Excel dressage saddle.

After the pictures, I decided to do his favorite thing, which is going for a hack in the woods. All started off well. Then, I let him choose one of the cross trails and we headed for the lake in the back. Fine.

He decided to go up the ridge to take the trail towards home. Fine until...remember the evil white chair? It was still there. He spooked. This was no place to really work him as the trail is narrow and drops off on a steep slope.

OK, I decided perhaps we could go around the lake. The ground is amazingly dry, so I thought the mudholes created by the ATV ruts would be dry enough to cross. I was right. What I had forgotten about was the equally evil garbage bag tied to the tree where the men fish.

I also forgot that Chance had never seen it before and that we were coming upon it around a blind corner. And again, with the lake on one side and another narrow section of trail, there was no place to work him out of his fear. He spooked and spun. We tried again and he spooked and spun again, nearly galloping off in the opposite direction.

I dismounted to lead him past. He was unsure, but followed me and settled quickly. The bag is a horror to me as well since it is now ripped and all the cans, bottles and trash--a good pile--are scattered all over the area. It is ugly pollution. If those guys wanted to keep things clean by bringing in a garbage bag, fine, but then cart the garbage back out!!! It is a disgrace. I will have to go and clean it up when I get the time. It will not be easy for me because I will have to walk in and out as there is no way to get a vehicle in there. Of course, if I had and ATV.....but the ATV's cause the problem.

Now that I was on the ground remounting was a new problem. With my knees I simply cannot mount from the ground, so I need something to climb on. But then, I decided I might as well go get rid of the evil chair since it had caused all the trouble in the first place. That required a hike back to the other side of the lake, with Chance in tow. The one good thing is that by the time he, I, and the chair got back home, he was no longer afraid of it.

I set it in the arena because both Toby and Tucker had decided as soon as they saw it that it was truly an EVIL chair, worthy of a snorting set of spooks, leaps and bounds. However, by the time I had unsaddled Chance and put his sheet back on, Tucker had successfully "killed" the aforesaid evil chair and it was lying on its side in its final death throes. I will have to decide whether to put it out near the missing trash bin for garbage collection on Thursday or keep it to sit on somewhere. I think the trash is more than likely, but for the night I left it in the arena so the Boys can come to grips with its existence.

After I poo picked the arena I was going to lunge Tucker, but he had strolled out to the middle of the pasture and, to be frank, my knees, already having hiked a good distance through the woods, simply could not drag me out to collect him.

Just fine. It was Chance's day anyhow.