Best Bebe

Goggles is coming along really spectacularly. I sometimes have to mentally pinch myself wondering how I lucked out with him. A barn friend and I took him and a 6 YO WB gelding for a hack off property last week. Goggles has made it to the corner of the street by himself once before and was pretty stellar for that. I was excited to venture a little further with solid company. We walked for an hour and a half and he was PERFECT the whole time. The WB gelding, who is the picture of a warmblood gelding in the dictionary, was pretty exhausted and sure he was dead when we turned around, so he was wishing to be left where he was and allowed to eat grass until a trailer came to pick him up. He carried this exhaustion into his ride the next day as well and was apparently VERY reluctant to go forward, poor dude. Goggles felt no such exhaustion and was happy as a clam to continue along, but equally happy to turn around and head home. We were passed by cars and trucks which barely warranted an ear flick. We walked over painted stripes on the road and a few different types and colors of concrete driveways. We walked by a tractor mowing, an arabian, a young (two or three year old?) horse who galloped the fence line and had a few donkeys for company, several types of rings and houses, and horses on a hot walker. The horses on the walker were THE MOST FASCINATING THING he'd ever seen. 

STARE

You can kinda sorta see the metal of it through the trees - there were two horses in it going round in circles

I think he couldn't see the metal well, but could see the horses moving and was thoroughly confused about why they would be continually plodding in circles. 

On the way home he decided he could in fact eat and stopped several times to grab snacks. I encourage it at this point, but I think he will cross the line from "relaxing" to "rudely turning the hack into a snack" at some point in the next year or two and we'll have to rework that. 

Since Ben had failed to take me with him to safety for the first time ever two days prior, I was especially delighted by the spook free trail ride. In Ben's defense, I was in LALA LAND while doing a trot set and two turkeys stood up out of long grass. He spun, cantered a few strides away, then let me catch him easily with a look on his face like "WHY would you stay with the MURDER BIRDS?!?!" And the long grass made for a soft landing with no soreness the next day.

In every other area Goggles continues to excel too. He's learning about bend SO nicely now and is just more and more together each ride. His canter transitions are getting really nice and he just stepped into a lovely left lead canter smoothly and easily during our ride on Monday. He also is pretty sure he's got this jumping thing figured out, and even though the cavaletti were on the lowest setting, did the CUTEST bounce over them when we were trotting around the field over ground poles. 

Reminding me that he is still a green four year old, he did levitate both of us when I had him walk over fallen sticks covered in spanish moss. There was more than one stick involved and a piece moved under his feet when he stepped on it and he shot straight up in the air. I felt about two feet out of the saddle, but he stayed straight, so I thunked back down into it. I got off and stood on the branches myself for a bit and then we walked over them together before I got back on and walked over them under saddle again. He is really reassured by me (or JT) doing things or standing on things, a nice trait that we'll keep using. 

I had to have another horse pre-start his apple for him, but then he quite enjoyed it 

Noms