Pony Photoblast
| September 28, 2014 | Posted by Melinda under Uncategorized |
This is a mostly pointless post with lots of photos (and a video or two).
To make it less burdensome to look at pics of *my* ponies, I’ve arranged as a photo collage for your viewing pleasure.
First up is MerryLegs.
MerryLegs is a *very* good girl in the round pen. 90% of our work looks like this:
In the bottom pic, that is *not* rib – it’s the skin scrunching over her ribs.
I really like MerryLegs natural tendency to travel quietly off her hind end with a low head.
That’s not to say we don’t have the occasional arab moment. Or head in the air extended trot (aka Farley). Or a nice uphill, balanced canter (that I mostly am *not* asking for). While Farley (and Tig) prefer to move around at a big trot, MerryLegs easily pics up a beautiful effortless canter in both directions. It’s hard not to watch her float around the round pen at both the trot and canter and not imagine how float-y and beautiful it’s going to feel in the saddle.
I don’t mind the occasional zoomy-around display of energy, because it almost always ends with ML playing around with that energy and incorporating it into that nice working trot.
Isn’t it fun to watch her figure it out?
(Unlike my title which suggests that “figure” is not an essential word in that sentence).
BTW – I’m NOT shuffling the order of these pictures. This progression really does happen consistently just like this.
After the session she *always* gets to go back to the paddock first to get a headstart on her mash before adding Farley to the mix.
Both horses will call to the other one, but the good thing is which ever horse is being worked, completely ignores the idiot left behind.
Farley is looking quite good as well. Both horses have put on a little weight. Farley is about perfect, and it’s really difficult to tell with ML because she looks so different week to week.
In the video, it’s easy to point to Farley’s wide barrel and say “SHE’S FAT!!!!!!!” – but she’s not. She is built like a barrel (and rides like one too…..) but those ribs are right there. She’s probably at a 4.5 body score condition, with ML being ~4.
Farley is the WORST picture subject. Above are the only 2 pictures I tried to get of her face. Both failures.
Here’s two videos showing off each horse.
Wow, babyhorse moves great! And looks so grown-up in those pictures. O.o
Im not pushing ML at all. Shes the one pushing me and offering stuff. Trying to go as slow as I can because even though she looks older shes so young….
Its so hard when the horse is like…..make me do stuff!!!!!!!! Lol
Ha, I hear you! And I hope my comment didn’t read like I thought you were pushing her — the work looks/sounds totally appropriate to where she is in her life. The O.o was meant to indicate me being surprised/impressed by her aptitude. Maybe a bad choice of emoticons — sorry!
What I dont understand is why people post pics of for sale horses working in aroundpen where their head Iis up and they are inverted and acting and looking like crazy arabs. There was a nice two year old on facebook the other day that reminded me of ML in look and build and from the text sounded like ainilar personality. But the pics were typical “im an ARAB” instead of nicely working in a way that gave me confidence he would be a nice riding horse. If I was selling ML (im not) these are the sorts of pics I would post.
ML looks great! Very mature and looks like a good using horse head to tail.
I hear you on how hard it is to wait..Sheza has things down pat and is so good on trail already that I’m like shuffling around trying to come up with non super physical things to keep her interested..when I really just want to go ride miles. all in good time!
Yeah….ground driving and a lot more ponying is on the docket for now.
Beautiful bay girls!