Burr-illiant

Don't embarrass me mum!

We had a lovely moment on Friday evening, I had gone down to the field to check on my friend's pony and take her hay down, and thought I would pay the boys a visit whilst I was there too. When Rio wandered over, all I could see was his Elvis hairstyle where he's been burying his nose into the shrubbery and collecting burrs again (probably for bonus points if it really was a game!) After a few minutes of walking around with him, Rio eventually realised I was doing this, and dropped his head for me to start getting rid of them. After I had gotten rid of the main bulk, I started from the right and was seperating little strands out so I could get rid of the little bits that were left, and all of a sudden, I just heard a bit of a "flump" and he disappeared! (I didn't have my head torch on I was doing it by the moonlight, and feel) When I looked down, this is what I found:

You have no idea how pleased I was. I approached him again slowly and stroked him a bit, but he was more than happy and let me finish getting rid of the burrs whilst he had a little nap. 

Today was windy. We managed to get out of the gates with minimal wiggling around, and a couple of snorts. The walk to the yard however, was a different matter. There was lots of persuasion required, he didn't want to walk forward, so the only way I could move him on was to keep walking a wiggly line! When we came to walking across the scary outdoor schooling paddock I walked him in several circles and was part way through serpentining up the school before he stopped dead again. Then he didn't want to go through the gate past the big scary tree...

Anyway, I will let him off for that as I eventually decided that I couldn't let the wind get the better of me, and we went in the little indoor school. We lunged, (even managed a few strides of canter!), free lunged (including changing the rein when I was asking a few times, albeit it quite tight turns) and then I hopped on to walk him round to cool off. We actually had a bit of sweating going on, so I was pleased about that too!

I'm going to reduce the amount of beet he has in his feed as despite the waning quantities of grass in their paddock, he's still managed to put on a good amount of weight, and he's now at the point where I don't want him any rounder! Coming into Spring soon, and we can start working properly to get his muscle tone up and he's going to look fab!

To finish - he reluctantly let me plait his forelock, in the hope that we can avoid more burr pulling... Teehee.

Ride safe x