Chance Again

But In the Arena First

I did my hour's plus swim this morning. The pool is indoors, of course and it felt wonderful to get in the water. Outside the temperature was in the mid 60'sF--another beautiful day.

I did a bit of shopping on the way home. I need to do something about my back porch door. Last night--and not for the first time--a little skunk was inside eating the cat food. When he tried to get out, he could not fit under the door--the way he had apparently come in. I've had trouble with this before and there was an extra wooden sill attached to the outside concrete step.  I need to replace that, so I picked up some special adhesive from Home Depot.

Of course, once home, I did not work on the door. I'm not sure where the old wooden sill is, or if I still have it. If not, I am going to have to make something suitable. I may need to buy some wood, but better yet, I may be able to go to the school and have them fabricate something from some scrap wood there. Either way, it's a job that's going to have to wait until I have all the supplies at hand.

After lunch and a bit of computer time, I headed out to ride.

It was Chance's turn, of course. This time, however, I decided to work him in the arena for a while before heading out on a short trail ride.

I must say, Chance has managed to understand the concept of stretching down into the bit, but he is not yet at all soft about it.  Again, if I were to work him steadily on it for a week or two he'd improve considerably. I guess that's on the agenda for the riding season. I think too that some long lining would really be a benefit.

As they say, I'll get around to it.

After I'd done about 15 minutes of arena riding, I headed out to take the "middle" woods trail.

No more need be said. My neat little trail horse--only "little" in comparison to 17h Tucker and 16.2h Toby since he stands at 15.3 or so--was nearly perfect out there. "Nearly" only because he did take a second look at cornstalk that had fallen at the edge of the woods near a mud puddle.

When we got back home, Toby was in the arena. I'd locked the gate but at one end, where the fence it totally fallen down, I'd blocked the way in with the blue barrels. Since three of them were lying down to make a "discouraging " fence to keep the Boys out of the arena, I can only presume that Toby jumped the barrels to get in. He frets and frets when one of his herdmates is off on an adventure, so he wanted to get to the woods gate to call for Chance.

Tucker, meanwhile, had not caught on to the barrel jumping technique, so he was stuck in the adjacent paddock, not at all happy to be separated from his buddy Toby.  He was galloping madly about, bucking and making quite a fuss.

When I did open the gate to let him in the arena, he put on a grand show.  It would have been the moment to have my camera and get some good action shots.

But, as usual, the camera was in the house.

Just use your imagination. 17h bay bucking bronco TB.

Cute??? Or not.