The Little Raider

Too Funny For Me

I just started to head out to ride before it rains again, and there was a "thunk" on the back porch. Note, my porch is enclosed, does have a cat door I have blocked off, but the storm door has an opening under it.

There looking quite startled, sat a squirrel, inside, by the door. I backed quietly away, just to watch.

The bird food and peanuts are in a plastic garbage can with a lid, but a few days ago I found a hole gnawed in the lid. Suspicion was aroused as I'd thought I'd seen a furry tail disappear under the door before.

Today, as I watched from the shadows, the little furry tail raider, squished him/her self into the hole--not quite big enough for little fat butt to fit through without some effort--and disappeared into the can where the delicious bird seed is stored.

That explains the sunflower seed hulls and the fast emptying bag of peanuts. Alas, I will now go out to ride and scare off my little fur butted raider, but it surely was fun watching the clever little critter pull off its burglary on my back porch.

Now, should I get a metal can or just play dumb about the robbery?

By the by, I did fill the bird feeder this morning and I put out a nice ear of corn for certain furry crooks.

Update: It's raining again.

But I did get two good rides in.

Tucker was quite a good boy and, he is getting much quicker off my leg. I am concentrating on asking once, then tapping with the whip if he doesn't "jump" forward. While I am not expecting an explosive depart, I do want instant forward. I have worked on this before, and kind of neglected it over time, especially with his other training issues, so remedial insistence is a good thing. At the end, again, I put him in a fairly snug frame and repeated some of the exercises with great success, so, so far, so good.

Also he is getting the hang of a nice reinback with a good forward afterwards. What was happening before is that he was do two nice steps in reinback, then brace against the bit. I would have to correct him and then ask for more steps. Today, no problem. Good boy.

The rain was spitting when I got on Chance. As usual, there was some regression with the concept of "on the bit" or at least "into the bit," but that is to be expected sinces it's been too long between schools. The trot work gets better as we go along, so that's a plus. His canter is now relaxed on both leads, so that's good, but he still wants to use his head and neck for balance off the bit, so that is going to need some work. Overall, I'd still give him good scores as he has such a lovely temperament and a pretty solid work ethic.

About the worst thing he does, besides sometimes breaking gait, is to kind of lean toward the gate heading out into the woods when we go past. While I would love to take him out for a hack as a reward, the mosquitoes would lift us up and carry us off right now. Since I didn't have the bug armor on him or a good douse of Mosquito Halt bug spray, I opted out.

If it ever dries up, perhaps then we can risk a forest trail. In the meantime, I'd rather not challenge those six legged blood suckers. They really might carry us off.