Somebody's watching me...

The kids are out of school on Christmas break! This is exciting to me, because working horses is much more invigorating with Patience (able to do her own horse) and the boys (wreaking havoc) all running around, making noise, and shaking up the horse's dull lives a bit :) Today was rather interesting, I've separated Chester and Rascal into different paddocks because of some "fit" issues - mostly related to being friend sour and they seem to be doing sooo much better this way. Plus Chester was eating Rascal's tail and I can't very well take her to any show's with a half-eaten tail!
At any rate, us girls were feeding, grooming, mucking, etc while the boys took turns "working" each other in the round pen. (It's sooo cute, one of them stands in the middle with a whip and "drives" the other one around the pen-I need to get pics) After a while I kicked the boys out of the round pen and exercised Chester. When we got done, Patience asked if I was going to exercise Rascal and I told her yes, just let me get my stuff put up. Low and behold, I came out of the shed and Patience had Rascal bookin it around the round pen! Free lunge at that! My jaw absolutely hit the ground - I mean, we've worked on this before but Patience just wasn't catching on to the body language and they just didn't "click" so I've just been doing it. After I picked up my jaw I walked over and watched, just giving a few pointers. If I hadn't seen their communication with my own eyes I wouldn't believe it, they were totally in the zone and completely concentrated on each other!
Later on, in the car I asked Patience where she learned all that. She simply said she'd been watching me do it and so now she knows how...

FIRE!

Uh oh! One of the many things I try not to think about is grass fire. Hubby got a call yesterday and I answered (he was cleaning fish). A friend called to inform us that there were some huge grass fires and one just happened to have surrounded my beautiful Arabs. Shit. I tried not to panic. Hubby noticed my non-panic as I frantically searched for my keys and cursed our house ghost (they are never where I left them) and we all hopped in the truck and hauled A** to the horses to discover that indeed there was a fire all around the horses. To the north, south, east, and west, only missing the paddocks by feet. Fire trucks were everywhere, I was worried about the horses, and about all the livestock, houses, hay, etc. Needless to say, Chester and Rascal were NOT happy with all the fire and sirens and commotion, but they both kept their heads. I think if I'd had to move them pronto it would not have been difficult. I never did find my keys - not till this morning did I find them in a basket by the TV. Shakin my head, I would never have put them there?!

After some thought, I disagree...

About a month and a half ago the farrier was out to do the horses. Since he's really about the only other horsey person I see we usually talk horse. The conversation got going really well while he was doing Rascal's feet and he voiced some opinions that I've been mulling over. We were discussing getting horses under saddle. His opinion is that training a horse to carry a rider is the "hard" part and all the ground work is the "easy" part and that bascially anyone can teach a horse ground work. After some careful thought I have to say that I disagree. Obviously not anyone can teach a horse how to move on the ground, how to respect your space, and how to exhibit proper manners. Maybe it is easy, and maybe my opinion is based on the fact that so many people just do not teach/make their horses behave properly on the ground. I think the riding foundation is built off the ground foundation and if there's a crack anywhere you have to go right back to square one-which is on the ground.
LOL! Now onto more important things. The horses are doing very well, it's getting cold, the days are shorter and Christmas is right around the corner!