Horse Stories 2

I'm writing this on April 29; I'm going to send it out Monday May 3, but when I say "today" and "yesterday," I mean Thursday and Wednesday, respectively.

Today's most recent riding lesson was marked by rain, and lots of it. We were supposed to just get a drizzle, but halfway through the lesson is started to bucket down, so our trainer moved us to the (small) indoor arena and we did a lunge lesson where I tried to post without leaning too far forward.

Yesterday (Wednesday), Ormr and I rode on our own while my spouse Scott exercised Magni, Ormr's best friend, a chestnut Icelandic who belongs to our friend Alex. Magni is full of spring crazies and tried to yank his lead rope away from me and go galloping off to graze on the lawn and flirt with mares when I fetched the horses from the pasture. Fortunately, I lift, and I had Ormr's lead rope in the other hand, and Ormr apparently has the makings of a pretty good cow pony because when I held onto both lead ropes he planted his feet like a little tank... and Magni came to an abrupt and unceremonious stop, and was pretty surprised about it.

Ormr is a having some spring feelings too, and is expressing them by regressing a little to some of his prior behavior. I'm not sure what's upsetting him, but when he gets worried and tense he stops trying to figure out the game and win it and get a reward: he just tries to avoid the work. (I'm sure we can all relate.)