I’ve always thought of Summer as “horse time”. Long days and good weather are the perfect combination for this horse crazy girl with an 8-5 office job to still get time in the saddle. But I’ve never lived in a place where it’s consistently SO DANG HOT in the Summer months. It’s been a difficult adjustment, to say the least!
But we recently had a Sunday in the mid-80’s and boy, did we take advantage of that!
First, we caught Sandra Dee, the buckskin mare we brought home a couple weeks ago. She’s 6 years old and barely halter broke, her feet need attention, and she hasn’t decided whether she’s a people fan or not. To catch her, we had to herd her out of her pasture and into the corral area so she didn’t have the option of escaping. Then, to the round pen we went!
(Note: the photo of the homeless looking horses wearing halters in their field are the curious neighbor mares that share a fenceline with us – and this is not meant to be a rude statement, our horses (and even ourselves) look homeless from time to time as well.)
For the minimal amount of handling she has had, we were really impressed with Sandra Dee! We did some round pen work, desensitizing with the lead rope all over her body, flexing, and picking up her front feet. We left her in a corral for now so we can easily work her the next few evenings. She’s a very smart girl, just unsure.
We took a little lunch break and then headed back out to get Skipper, Kelly’s 3 year old mustang gelding. We had started doing some groundwork with him this Spring and he had proven to be a bit difficult, very flighty and reactive. We had the opportunity to send him out to be started and we jumped on it.
We brought Skipper home from the trainer about 3 weeks ago and due to our busy schedules, an eye injury, and the insane heat, he has just been sitting in the pasture and we were hopeful he was studying everything he had learned.
He told us we had nothing to worry about, he’s an excellent student.
I ended the day with a good ride on my sweet Spur. It hit me the following day on my way to work that he’s now a horse I can let sit for a month and not worry about our next ride… it’s not ideal, but it does mean he’s growing up on me and all of our miles and experiences have paid off.
(All photos edited with Piper’s Zoo Lightroom Presets, available for purchase here. Use special code horsetime for 20% off as a thank you for reading my blog!)
