Rode Max

Yesterday, D got home from work early enough that I could have him watch Baby O for a little bit while I did some chores. I went out to water the experimental garden (you can see it in the background. I put up hoop houses with cold weather seeds earlier this year. So far so good), and feed the animals.

It was a very windy day and as I was feeding, the town's tornado sirens went off (state-wide test day). Normally, we can't hear them, but the wind was coming from town. I asked D if he could hear them in the house.  He couldn't.  Good to know.  Wind + sirens = pony on edge.

Rode the pony!  He wasn't impressed, but obliged.

After I gave Max his grain, I decided to groom him since he's finally shedding all over.  Something in my head thought it would be a good idea to get up on him in the paddock just to see what it was like. And it went fairly well. I could tell he was a little on edge and kept getting distracted, but he never offered to spook.  I even tried trotting him a short distance. He listened (yay!) and didn't seem like he was going to offer up a buck or bolt (double yay).  One thing we need to work on is standing still.  I had put him in place to take the photo, but after a couple of seconds he veered off to the right.  So back we went. 

One interesting thing about this short ride was that it felt he was responding to light leg pressure.  It really didn't take much for me to get him going into a walk or trot. It almost seems like he knows all this stuff, he just chooses to ignore what you're asking out of laziness.