Stable View - Day 0 and 1 - The Socialite

Butterball and I drove up to Aiken on Friday. We left at a pretty leisurely 10:30 AM. We were staying about 30 minutes from Stable View at a friend of a friend's farm. 

Butterball ate

And napped

Rainy as we pulled in 

The one thing Butterball didn't do while travelling was drink any water, which worried me. Fortunately as soon as we turned him out he took a nice long drink. Excellent. 

Trotting up to me, I love him 

He was in a pasture where he could see the permanent residents (two horses and a donkey) part of the time. I did find in the morning when they'd moved to the far end of their pasture where he couldn't see them that he had dug a bit of a hole in the corner closest to them. Sorry dude. I spent a somewhat restful night in the trailer. Note to self- the cozy spot under trees is NOT cozy in the rain because when the nice soft rain stops there will be LOUD intermittent drips falling from trees. 

We dressaged at 1:30, so I started the bath and braid process around 10 AM Saturday morning. The washrack had hot and cold water, which meant he got a nice WARM bath! Lucky pony! He was a little anxious in the barn solo braiding and then a little anxious when we pulled up. I was a little anxious when I discovered that he had probably spent the 30 minute trailer ride trying to rub out his braids. I should've known after his dramatic roll at Chatt as soon as we got back to the stall after dressage. Now I know. 

"I deny trying to rub these out. You just suck at braiding."

I have continually forgotten to take a pic of his last two braids - they get so white with his frosted mane, I find it just adorable

Mid-paw, his forelock braid was not my best work

I gave us about a 45 minute dressage warm up which was totally unnecessary. But he wouldn't even settle and eat grass near the trailer, so I was unsure how long the hack to dressage through tents and other potentially spooky stuff would take us. And also, for the first time ever, kind of unsure what kind of horse I was going to be sitting on. But he got to warm up and was like "Oh, we're here to dressage, got it." and was solidly lovely. So we walked a lot on a loose rein so I didn't use up the pony. He also met not just one adoring fan, but three. And ate it all up. He's hilarious. Even though people have never fed him cookies, he's always looking to catch someone's eye on the rail and be a complete ham. He marches right up, puts his nose alllllmost too far into their space, and then flirts with them. 

We were in the ring next to tents, but I put him to work around the outside and he didn't seem to care at all. Our dressage test was totally respectable, but not sparkling. It's all very pleasant now, so I need to ask for more. More trot, more softness. If we could bump just a couple of those trot scores up to 8's, the whole score would go up. 

31.4, good enough for 11-T out of 31 

I walked XC and stadium with EM after dressage and then took the pony back to his temporary home. This time we put him in a HUGE field more adjacent to his friends. He was IN LOVE with the donkey, Cotton. We let them meet over the fence and Butterball tried to touch the poor donkey an offensive amount. The donkey ended up moving away from the fence like "who is this weirdo and why is he obsessed with me??" 

Please may I have him?? 

Butterball did do some trotting around and mostly stayed on the side of the pasture closest to his new BFF. But overall he seemed more settled. I had a pleasant evening sitting outside of the barn, watching him move around in his pasture while I ate my dinner. 

I suffered the only casualty of the trip that evening. It was still... damp everywhere from all the rain and I stepped out of the trailer tack room onto the mounting block that was on slightly slanted ground and almost ate it. I didn't, but smacked the SHIT out of the medial part of my right ankle. The bruise is super fun colors right now. But at least it didn't tweak any ligaments in any way. So I'll take it, even if my boots did rub the bruise in a very special way on Sunday.