Ummmmm....Cross Country???

Yesterday morning the weather was sooooo nice I had to head out to the barn. I packed up the boys with thier lunches, and their bikes and we were out the door. I had tons planned. First I was gonna ride Diesel. It had been a week since I graced myself with his fatness. Then, it was bath time for the BigRedHorse. After that it was home to make dinner and then back out ot the barn for some more Olly time.
I walked down to the fatty stall where Diesel stays. he is a good boy...just a little green.
for some reason the last two times I have ridden the painted trouble he has been totally not o.k. with being saddled. He has been using his big ass to push me around. I, mean, he really has learned to swing that thing. So, big tricolor ass vs. me and a barrel racing crop...who do you think won?


It took me 10 minutes just to get the saddle on, but me of course!
He wasn't too fond of the cantering, you can see in the video where he bucks a few times. I tried like hell to get him to take his right lead, but after 15 minutes of him sweating his tricolor butt off, i gave in. My legs were tired from all the "aids."
I did give him some love and hosed him off for his efforts and put him back in his stall. on the way back out I grabbed Olly and the hose for a bath.
Olly always likes getting a bath. He loves the water and nothing beats a great rubber mitted massage, who cares if there is shampoo on it?? I enjoyed the alone time with my boy and after he was spotless, I threw on his fly sheet until I came back that night for our ride.
I was getting ready to leave the house to head back to the barn and I text Tif about our riding plans. We had decided that we were going to take all the jumps and put them in our nicely mowed mini field. I barely got out of the truck and I turned to see If kicking one of the barrels my way. I hopped back in thr truck and Pulled into the arena next to her. Let's load'er up. We pack in EVERY SINGLE JUMP. My truck was loaded down. I should have taken a pic. We planned carefully (lol) where we were going to put our jumps, let's just say neither one of us are going to be course designers in the near future.
Time to saddle.
Now, lately, I haven't been tying Olly to the hitching post because he always freaks out when he feels the halter get tight. I decided to just wrap the lead around the post. It had been working. So, when he pulls back it slips and he calms. No big deal.....unless...

This is what happenes EVERY TIME I tie him....

...the rope gets tangled and he freaks out to the point of maxing the halter. After a few minutes, I convinced him to give some slack and I untied the rope halter.
So next was to finish saddling and get the fly spray on. Now, I normally spary him BEFORE I saddle just to make life easier, but he was being good and the flies weren't that bad. I readched down to make sure the his boots were on and he decided to swing his him leg to swat a fly and clipped me in the leg. OUCH!!! I instantly made him aware that you just can kick around when I am that close. He needs to pay attention to where his feet are.

Now

Later

Time to ride. We started out warming up and checking out all the jumps. I could tell already he was going to have a problem with his leads. He has been pretty good with his leads up until recently. Tif said it may be because of his weight gain. It might be throwing his balance off. So, that's what I am going with. It makes sense in other ways too. I have been having to hold him more for his spots and really working to get him on to the correct leads. Even when I break to do a simple he misses. Back to the basics. Just when I thought we were gonna be able to move on. Oh, well. I would rather have to back up and work on it than him stay under weight. I did get the video of the xc course.



Here is Tif. She had an awesome ride with her boy.



And we also got Kelsey, the barrel racer, to ride...she will come around one day!