Using the little arena

I tend to hate flat work and especially riding in small areas where I have to focus if doing any canter work. But since Shade and then Sadie seemed to get 'colds' in september about the time I had hoped to ship Sadie off to be started I did mess with her a bit myself. Mostly worked on trailer loading --she will go in the (stock) trailer now and backs out. Nice to have a horse that will back out of the trailer so I'm going to try to maintain that. I did put the surcingle on her a couple of times and put Shades sidepull on her and then longed her with the reins tied to the surcingle rings. I don't know if I'll try that with a bit or not.

Rode Grey Moun in the arena saturday and Shade this morning. Grey dropped his head SO nicely for me. I was using Shades little S hack on him. Hmmm I guess the curb action makes him round and drop his poll more readily. Too bad I never tried that when I was riding him more and struggling with trying to get him to round. It rained yesterday so no irritating dust but Shade did not cough ONCE when I rode her this morning. Happy dance.

Its been such a hassle to ride out lately. Ole wants to come but the sand burrs are so thick heading east. But I don't want to head west because I don't trust Ole to stay out of the neighborhood. So I think I may mainly do flat work rather than going down the road until the sand burrs die off for the winter.

I started tying Ole to a horse shoe from the game and he is getting the hang of dragging it to where he wants to be so its less likely that I will try to put up an overhead zip line for him.