Today Brian and I headed for the barn in the afternoon. Lately Brian’s foot has been having issues, so he wanted to try some outdoor bareback work to avoid the stirrup. We set him up with his normal saddle pad underneath the bareback pad we bought a couple years ago and that set-up seemed to work well for him. He mounted from the ground again and proceeded to have a pretty great ride on the strip. He and Bear looked really good – balanced, relaxed and in good communication.
I did use a saddle, and had another very mellow, relaxed ride on Steen. He was again jogging like a western pleasure horse, standing quite willingly and beyond that just being his normal goofy self.
In fact, as much as I’d say Steen has always had a pretty distinct personality, lately his goofiness has just been coming out more and more. Today he picked almost every item out of my grooming bucket, one by one, holding each item in his teeth and shaking it around for a while before dropping it. In the end he grabbed the whole bucket and dumped the last few things out. He did all this while picking up and holding each foot perfectly for me to pick. I don’t know where he gets it from, but he’s just a complete joker.