Baby horse things

There's no media related to the things Gogs has been doing because I don't have three hands. We have started baby lunging. This means a roughly 20 foot circle at the walk and halt only. We've been working on what woah means and also working on woah without inverting the whole neck and sticking the head straight up in the air. 

There's a whole lotta muscle to add to that neck

Saturday morning I introduced a "leg" aid to start moving laterally a tiny bit. He half-heartedly kicked at it. I scolded and then asked again and he moved over. Clever clever boy! Lots of praise for that.

He got his feet done Friday and got a stellar review from the farrier. AND he got to stay BAREFOOT!!! I am SO EXCITED to not pay for 6 shoes right now. He walked out just fine on the rocky driveway the next day, no mincing steps. He also is tripping sooo much less now that his toes are a bit shorter. 

I don't really know what I'm doing with restarting him. But so far he and the people who trained him have made it super easy. He's very open to letting me move his body and other than a few bursts of baby here and there, he's been sooooo sensible. 

JT and I did a long lining and ground work lesson on Sunday. It became even more obvious then that whoever trained him spent a lot of time getting correct basics installed. He changes direction in the round pen very easily free lunging, and when we hooked him up to the long lines he was quite amenable to contact on the bit. He worried about the line behind his hind legs for maybe half a circle and then adjusted. And by worried I mean trotted a bit with extra hock action. Nothing dramatic. 

After long lining we played a bit with staying out of personal space using a parelli type stick, and he picked up on that very quickly too. It's a lot more pleasant than correcting him with the chain shank over his nose when he steps into my space. And it seemed to stick a lot longer. He had an attention ear on whoever was handling him while leading. The babies in the fields were putting on a whole show and he was still such a good boy. 

Which is good because he is SO TALL

He's really such a pleasant, sweet, thoughtful horse. So far I could not be any happier with this sight unseen, semi impulsive purchase. 

He seems to be growing, so we're taking things super slow. For the next few weeks, he'll long line a couple of times a week, and he and I will do a few more adventure walks with our new found personal space bubble installed. Eventually we'll get on him, but there's zero rush. That is also the really nice part about him being horse #2. I have no burning desire to go out and do things NOW since I have one who is out there doing plenty. This means it's a lot easier to just go at a relaxed pace that I'm sure is beneficial to him.