Cole Ride and Starry Emergency

I had a nice ride on Cole last night. I didn’t even need to lounge him, first. I am starting to think that I could skip it. He has today off. If he is still sensible on Wednesday, I do believe lounging will be a thing in the past.

I was able to ride by myself the whole time. We trotted all over the arena; doing circles and eights and a lot of transitions. He is fun to ride, now that I’m not frightened. He pretty much stopped his spooking-bolts—which was what was scaring me. In just a few short weeks, he is behaving better than Cruiser as far as spooks.

He is trying something new—and I think he is just testing his bounds. He sometimes stops and refuses to go forward. Next time, I will ride with a whip and see if I could gently convince him to change his mind. It is better than kicking his sides hard. It worked on the trail when he went through that phase, and after about a week, I didn’t need it anymore.

Starry D, my boyfriend’s horse, got cast last night. He was rolling in his stall. I am glad that I was there—and I had help. Three other women were there, and between all of us, we got him flipped over. He is such a big horse. I’m glad he didn’t panic. He is a quiet, good-natured Appendix Quarter Horse. Once he realized he was stuck, he just laid there, let us loop ropes around his legs and when he we pulled him over, he slowly and carefully got up—giving us time to get out of the way. He didn’t hurt himself at all.