Peaceful Weekend

This past weekend was so peaceful and relaxing, particularly Saturday. It rained all day Friday, and I stopped by Rural King to pick up some chicks.   Cute chicks always improves my mood.  My husband also went out of town for the night, so I was alone.

Cuteness!

Saturday was absolutely beautiful!  I put Max out in the pasture and started putting insulators on all the posts for the new electric fence. During one of my breaks, I groomed the pony a bit to help get out that winter coat.

Shaggy pony doubles as a table.

 During another break, I set up some cones on the driveway and rode the pony bareback to work on leg yielding. And he started doing it!  I only rode for about 20 minutes, but by the end, I had a relatively lose rein and he was moving over.  Not well yet, but it's a start. As a side note, the cones I acquired are too tall.  I almost knocked them over with my foot several times as we passed by.  The ground is so wet that I didn't want to tear up the pasture or yard by riding on it, so we stuck to the compact driveway. Also, farrier still hasn't been out and Max was a bit trippy.  Trippy pony + very soft ground = potential for accident. I'm also pleased because Max seemed very relaxed for the most part.  There was very little lip flapping and he stood still for a fair amount of time when I asked.

See! I did ride! Notice Cinderella to the left not grazing down the grass in the garden

After our short ride, I put him up and went in for some lunch. When I came back out, he and Cinderella were napping and I finished the insulator installation.  I'm hoping to finish up the electric fence this week and start in on the barbed wire removal.

Sorry! Didn't mean to wake you.

Groundwork

Yesterday Max and I did some ground work. I had intended to work mostly on turning, but ended up spending time working on standing still without grabbing for grass.  Max is constantly testing.  He's always trying to get the grass. When we're walking or standing still, he'll start to drop his head just a little, then a little more, and more, then suddenly it's straight down to the grass.  He's watching me every second he is doing this.  I think I need to be more consistent about when I correct him. I wouldn't mind if he dropped his head for relaxing, but he always goes for the grass. I think I need to start correcting every time he starts to drop his head.

Back through an L.

His turns were okay.  We need start focusing more on only moving one set of feet and not both. I only focused on turning on the forehand.  We did a little bit of work with backing and turning. I even set up another obstacle to work on. It's sitting on a sloped area and really isn't crooked. Max is really good at backing, but I'd like to get more energy out of him. It feels like he saying "do I really have to do this?".

Max was not amused by having to work and being denied grazing time.

 Through most of the groundwork, Max was flapping his lips a bit. I'll do a post soon on my thoughts on his flapping behavior. 

Sadly, those poles are going to get buried under a bunch of snow this weekend. We're supposed to get up to 8 inches by Monday morning. It's nothing like what the east coast got this week, but annoying and cold non-the-less.