Lazy Day and Barn Cleaning

No work today so it became a very lazy day. Went to go see Dollar around 1. Stopped by my parents place to drop off some stuff and grab the 4-wheeler to go get Dollar. Got out to pasture and found him just grazing in the middle of it with Mars. I called out his name, he looked up and started walking towards me! Guess he missed me. Him and Mars came right to the gate, so I slipped off his halter and put the bridle on. Got him out of there and got him tacked up in no time. Decided to go for a short 2-mile hack today so we set out at a brisk walk. And for the next 2 miles alternating between walking and trotting. He was behaving really good and I even got him to extend his trot a bit! Yeah! We just stuck to the walking and trotting, but we did have to review what "whoa" meant.

We trotted up to a stop sign and I had asked him to stop. He decided that we should keep on walking and ignored me. So I had to haul back on the reins and reinforce the "whoa" along with the spurs. I turned him around and had him trot up to it again. This time he figured out that whoa means whoa. Oh boy. Once we had that fixed up, we continued on our way. Still kept alternating between walking and trotting to keep him moving.

On our way back, I noticed that there was a "driveway" going into the bush with a fence up, so I decided to go in there and take a peek. Turns out that there was 2 horses in there. Poor things. Dollar didn't seem too interested in them, but he did go up to them, squeal, strike out with his front leg and ignore him. Such a snobbish old man. Lol. After we were done visiting with them, we continued on our way home.

Dollar visiting with some other horses

Once we got home, I tied him up to rest a little before I had to take him back to pasture. I talked to Dad about some ideas I had for the tack room in order to make it look neater and he agreed! Then Sam came home and I explained to her what I wanted to do. As I was explaining this to her, I was pulling the blankets out of the box they were in to go through them. Well, as I was doing that, a mouse crawled out of there! I, of course, screamed for my cat. But did she come? Nope. Some mouser she is. Me and Sam went through the blankets to see what damage the mice had done and realized that they had riped some pretty good holes in Sam's winter blankets for the stuffing. She wasn't too happy with that. Then she said that she had to run to town to get a birthday present for her boyfriends grandpa.

So I cleaned up the tack room and bit and changed the bit on my bridle. Dad had seen when I got back that one of the cheek piece was cracked 3/4 the way around. Don't need to break that when I'm out on the road. So I managed to find another bit (hopefully it fits. It looks quite big) and switched them out.

See that nice crack?? Yeah, don't need that to break.

When Sam got back, she had bought a big plastic tub with a lid on it so that she could store her blankets away from the mice. See? She liked my idea. Then we took out her winter blanket that the mice chewed up a bit and put it outside to air because it was also getting white spots of mould on there. Once we were done that, I put Dollar's bridle back on (and realized that the bit was waayy too big. Have to pick up a new one), hopped up and took him out to the pasture. Untacked him there and kicked him out (don't I sound mean?? I'm not!!) and headed home.

He seems to be doing pretty good with the hacks and seeing as we're done showing for this year, no reason not to go out for a hack.