Pants on Fire?

Red was channelling his inner racehorse today, apparently.  I walked out to get him this afternoon, and every other horse in the herd walked up to me; Red, however, took one look and galloped off.  Oh, boy.  It's one of those days, is it?  He conveniently galloped himself into the adjoining, and currently unoccupied, pasture, so I closed the gate on him and watched him gallop & whinny & snort & fart his way around me in huge loops until I could see his sides heaving & his nostrils flared as big as they go.  At that point, he slowed to an extended trot and continued for another while.  He sure was pretty running around like his pants were on fire, and I did kind of enjoy watching him.  I wasn't in a hurry and didn't have an agenda, so I just waited until he'd had enough.  Finally, he quit putting on a show, and walked calmly into the barn with me for saddling.  What a weirdo.  He wasn't worked up, or hyper at all.  It was almost like I was just an excuse to run around & show off or something.

Red looking as cool & calm as a cucumber despite his earlier period of insanity

We set off on a nice short road ride, and stopped by to pick up a few extra companions on the way home.  The first official Meadowbrook trail ride of the season was a hit!  Leah rode Rhio (who was a perfect gentleman), Christine rode Tomas, Kristi rode Winston, and Red lead the way.  It was a gorgeous evening with enough breeze to keep the mosquitoes mostly at bay, and we had a grand time.

Kelso supervising while Leah & Rhio got to know each other.

Looks like this pair is a hit! 

Setting off

A grand mini-adventure

Experiment

My first ride of the new year was January 5.  Our great winter riding conditions have been severely damaged by a day of freezing rain New Year's Eve.  Our deep snow now has a crunchy layer on top, which Kelso can mostly skim across but the horses definitely break through.  It makes riding in the snow even more difficult and a little bit dangerous, too.  The crust does not give fast enough sometimes, and Rhio really struggles to get those front legs up & out of the entrapping snow.  We had a few dramatic stumbles, but luckily he is agile enough to catch & right himself, and I was lucky enough to stay on (this time anyway).  No more trotting & cantering through the deep powder, which was so fun!  We are now stuck at a slow, lurching walk.

In anticipation of the risk of abrasion from the ice crust, I decided to try riding in polo wraps for protection. This resulted in utter failure, basically!  We lost both front wraps somewhere out there, and one hind wrap was bunched around his pastern & hoof when we got back.  Oops.  Guess I won't do that again!  Hopefully I'll be able to find the missing polos when I head out there on my snowshoes later.  Thankfully they are bright red, so they should be fairly visible - I hope.  He did acquire one tiny little scrape on a front cannon bone from the crust, but nothing significant.

Our companions for this experimental ride were Kristi & Winston.

On alert! We'd hand walked up to the house to fetch Killian so he could come along with us.  This required us to "run the gauntlet" between the goat/alpaca pen and the cow pasture. SCARY! 

The steer is actually much more afraid of Winston than Winston is of him, only Winston doesn't know it. 

The friendly white one

Letting Winston break trail and leave tail swish marks on the snow!