Pictures Finally!

 

 

  

My sexy man Ranger :)

 

Rosie the pony

 

If Strawberry's ears would have been perked up this would have been a perfect picture :D

 

Strawberry the bucking Belgian XD

 

Zorro wanting to give me a kiss

 

Nannie one of our new boarders :)

Well there are some pictures that have taken me forever to get on here :) I hope to get a video or two up here to show you more of my sexy man :)

Warm Weather!!

So the past few days up here has given us fantastic weather! Up in the 40s! The only problem I have with this is the snow is melting :( I mean for Pete's sake! It is the middle of February and we have NO SNOW.

So lately I have been giving Ranger some extra special care, doing some extra grooming and spending some quality time with him in the indoor arena. Since I have been going through some personal hard times, I feel like I need that personal time with him and it really ends up cheering me up :)

Since I have fail to post about the past few work days there is lots of news.


While lunging Ranger, I have found that he is most definitely a horse XDD I was lunging Ranger with the same routine as any day, make him walk off at a brisk walk to my left for a few rounds then trot for a while and then do some transition exercises. So I asked him to walk off and he starts at a very nice walk, but then halfway through the circle he would start to trot, then walk the next half, and he did this every time in the same spot for 3 rounds and I couldn't figure out WHY. Then, looking more closely at the ground, I saw this little hump that was almost invisible. This is where he was starting to trot as if trying to say "this is a HILL how can you expect me to WALK over it? It is so big!" Laughing at him, and myself, I had us move away from the said "hill" and he did fine after that. 

Yesterday, Wednesday, was another fantastic day, so Tia and I got all the stalls done extra early since there was no frozen bedding, which was nice for once. I decided that I really needed to spend some extra time with Ranger, so I went outside to get him from the pasture. Ranger shares a pasture with Strawberry (fat Belgian), Zorro (butt head paso fino) and Rosie (the cute pony). I had Tia come out with me with the whip because Zorro hates the idea of one of his pasture mates going inside before him, because heaven for bid someone would get FOOD before him. He is really a character. So I walked out and Ranger walked up right to me, and I saw Zorro coming towards Ranger, and Tia just swooshed the whip and he walked away, not to happy about it though. I saw that Strawberry was walking towards me, but she never gives us any trouble, but she must have been in a mood because she turned around and started bucking at Ranger and I. I got scared because I had Ranger on a lead line and the only place he could go was to back up, unless he wanted to run over me, which he didn't. Instead he took several paces backwards and Tia had time to get Berry away from us. It was totally unexpected but that is what happens when dealing with horses.

After about a minute I got Ranger calm enough to walk up to the gate so we could go inside. Once we got into the inside arena I decided that I didn't want to work with him right away, but instead allow him some time to just roam around, so I unhooked his lead line and almost instantly he started to pronk across the long side of the arena and cantering. He looked so happy so I just sat down on the mounting block and just watched him look so young and graceful. After a while he decided that he was a sexy man and looked at himself in the mirror for about 30 seconds until I called him over, then we had our lunging session.

He was a great boy during lunging, he is not afraid of the whip like he use to be and if I gently swoosh it he just knows that I want him to keep moving, and not go at a dead fast canter. I know Ranger won't be at the barn forever and I contacted my boss today asking her if she had his owner's e mail so I can contact them, because I would love to keep seeing Ranger and riding and working with him.

Hopefully get to ride on Friday (tomorrow) :)

Too Cold :(

Today I was really looking forward to riding, but woke up and checked the weather and it was suppose to be 10 degrees out, with a windchill making it feel like 0, so to say in the least I was not happy and decided against riding. But I guess the good thing is that I now have time to work on my college application essay that is due on Monday. *crosses fingers*

I have to call up Michelle to see if we can do a lesson tomorrow, I guess it all depends on how much I get done of this essay today.

Well that is my rant/update for the day :)
See I told you posts would get smaller.

OH and my laptop does not like the idea of uploading pictures, will try to get them up ASAP, thank you for being patient! 

Edit: And how could I almost forget! I was free lunging Ranger on..umm...Wednesday I believe and as usual, he was fantastic, giving me every transition between walk > trot > and halt that I asked for. At one point, towards the end, he really got into this amazing, and fluid trot.  Since I wanted to go out on a very good note, I decided to see if he could keep that pace for a couple rounds around the indoor arena.  When I saw him starting to lag, I gave him a few kisses and gave the whip a little swoosh, and he did a very unpredictable thing, he CANTERED!

Now I understand, "yea a horse cantered so what?" Well when Ranger first came to the barn he was very undertone, muscle wise, and when Michelle asked him to canter a couple days after he arrived he fell over. So when I saw him cantering I kind of panicked, not wanting to hurt a horse that wasn't my own. So I asked him to trot, that was the time where he was like "Oh my I can go faster! No I wanna keep going faster!" so it took me a few seconds longer than I wanted to, to get him back into a trot.  After he cooled down I groomed him up, even more proud of him!  


I hope to do some more canter work with him soon.

Wind, Wind, Wind!

Today was something else! On top of 11 degree weather, we had chilling 30 mph gusts of wind. Lets just say gusty wind + door that likes to make loud noises = not good.

Spiffy and Nannie were inside today, since Nannie does not have a winter coat and we didn't want her inside on her own all day. Well, I will just say that has made Spiffy and Nannie much closer! We had to move Spiffy in order to clean his stall, and lets just say Nannie was having NONE of that. She whinnied and called Spiffy the whole time that Tia was cleaning his stall. It got to the point where I decided to bring Spiffy back early so she would stop freaking out. The second she saw him all the calling subsided. What a cute couple!

I was really looking forward to riding today, but due to the wind gusts, the indoor arena was very loud and did not want Ranger to get spooked.

Also since it was very windy and very loud I decided not to groom Ranger today. But, I did have to hook him up to one cross tie to fix his blanket. When I hooked him up and fixed his blanket and went to go move him into his stall, he did not want to move. I believe he really wanted to get groomed, but I did not want to take the chance of him spooking on the cross ties.

I will get the pictures up ASAP! Hopefully I get to have a lesson this Sunday :)

Interesting Day

Well yesterday my sister and I went to work. It was raining outside and everything was so icey. We walked into the barn and was glad to see that all the horses were put in for the day, easier to groom that way. As we walked in we were greeted by Rosie, a boarding pony, and then numerous other whinnies from the other horses, but something was new. There was a new whinnie that Tia and I had not heard before. At a fast paced walk we got to one of the open stalls and saw this gorgeous bay mare standing there. Wanting to know who she was and her information, we went to the white board where messages are relayed back and forth from Michelle to us, but found no new messages. The new mare was so friendly and was so pretty.

In order to do chorse, we had to put Spiffy, a boarder, into the inside arena to clean his stall. I am guessing the new mare, who we found out to be named Nannie, and Spiffy had a very good liking for each other because neither of them stopped calling for each other. The instant she saw Spiffy again the both quieted down. HOW CUTE! Spiffy has a girlfriend!

So chores went on as normal and we groomed up all of the horses and took extra care to their feet, since Rosie has developed thrush in her back two hoofs.

I got to work with Ranger some more yesterday. Instead of having him on a lunge line he was on his lead rope. After a few minutes of work he let me rub him in almost any place on his body with the whip. The only play he is still shy about is his chest. I also managed to get some good pictures of Ranger while I was at the barn. =)