Boys in Black

Summary of the weekend thusfar:

• I've continued to ride Tyrone and enjoy him, even though he can be quite lazy :)
• I finally got a ride on David, the Friesian. I had to completely relearn steering and leg aids for him since he's a dressage horse, so after about 10 minutes of running into a fence and turning him the wrong way, I got it sorted out, his owner smiled and told me to have fun and went to go clean a saddle. Needless to say, that was a compliment. His owner told me later that I did well, and she wants me to ride him more for my benefit. Yay!
• Along with that last point, David's owner has offered to take me to see the dressage trainer she sees a few times a month. She named him, and my eyes got big; I recognized the name. He's the only 4th Level dressage trainer in the southeast, and I've heard about him, so I'm very excited to go watch him teach. She's also teaching me how to body clip a horse.
• For a moment of humor... one of the ponies this evening tried to jump me while I carried his feed out to his pan for dinner. You can imagine how that well that went over with me. He came at me teeth bared and ears pinned; it was a funny sight, considering how his ears come to about my head. Well, there was nothing between him and the feed, save my fragile little hand *snort, giggle*, so I emptied the ammo in my other hand; a feed bucket. The plastic warped around his head and ears, then bounced off his neck and hit his rear. Double whammy! That little idiot jumped away, snorting with his eyes wide and white. You can bet he waited VERY politely for me to take my time pouring his feed into his pan and calmly walking away. He knows better than to pull that kind of behavior with ANYONE, especially since little kids are the one that do a lot of his handling. So, Penfield saw the end of the world for about five seconds.

To defend that kind of reaction... watch an alpha mare correct a youngster in a herd someday. There is no polite "Oh, you didn't mean to run into me...". That mare's reaction is swing around, teeth bared with a BAD-IDEA-GET-AWAY-RIGHT-NOW look on her face. That's how horse hierarchies work, so that's how it works when I step into a field of horses. When I'm not there, they can sort out their pecking order. But when I come into the field, stall or whatever, authority shifts to me by default. So, the offender sees the sky fall for a very short period of time, lesson learned (hopefully).

That's all for now.