Did I mention I love this hooligan!?

 Daniel and I had fun today! It was a nice warm sunshiney spring day. Almost hot even! In February!! It was glorious. But, oh do I fear that we'll pay the price. Oh well. I've got enough to worry about. But yep, the sun was shining, the birds were chirping, and the grass is even growing! I had to spend the morning doing invoices and then calling about my car. Poor Pistol Pete got creamed by a deer yesterday. Sigh. The poor deer. I couldn't avoid it. She jumped the fence on the road and flew out in front of me before I even knew it was happened. I didn't even have time to break. She smashed my whole front left side up. Luckily she was dead by the time I pulled over and got to her. I had to crawl over to the passenger side to get out because my door wouldn't open. Sadness. So much sadness. So yeah.. I was dealing with that this morning. But then! I had the whole day of sunshine ahead of me. 

I ended up lunging Dan first. They were all out by the arena grazing. And Lyric was actually sleeping, so Dan volunteered first. :) I brought him into the arena and we did our pillar walking. He's gotten so good at pillar 3. Pillar 2 is still a work in progress. Then we went to lunge. I ended up pulling out one pole and one cavaletti to put on our circle. I left a little space in between so that he could avoid it if needed. Or if I thought he needed to avoid it. So we started lunging and avoided the poles in the beginning. He was a good boy! He didn't try too hard to grab the lead rope today and we got some nice stretchy peanut rolling work. I was actually trying to get him to come a little bit more up so he wasn't so far on the forehand (if he actually is... I don't even know anymore) and he did some! We did some nice transitions too. Then we went the other way and the same thing. Then we added in the poles. He was so cute because he looked like he was getting bored and when I pulled the poles out his eyes lit up. So when we started trotting again and I aimed him towards the pole, he immediately eyeballed the caveletti and aimed towards that! He surprised me and ended up jumping the x part of the cavaletti! Ha ha. Good boy!!! Way to zero in on that! So we did the poles and the cavaletti's and he was good. He stayed soft in his neck over them! We did both directions. 

Then we went back out on the circle and off the poles and I asked him to canter. He did both ways fine, although the right lead was a little sloppy again. And he picked up the counter canter once or twice though he immediately corrected it (both front and back) so ... not perfect, but not bad at all. He's gotten fairly unfit. Poor guy. Although I can't blame him. He's essentially done minimal work for the past year almost. Even when he wasn't rehabbing from stifle surgery, we were rehabbing from him falling apart. And then he couldn't do anything. And then he scared the tar out of me. Then his feet hurt. So yeah, poor guy. Plus it's unseasonably warm and while he was clipped once this year, only once. So he was puffing a little bit. We did a good 20 minutes or so of trotting and cantering with some walk breaks, so not too bad! 

Then a few hours later Lexi came to work on him again. He was super good for the back half and was making us laugh. Three separate times he arched his neck straight up and then stretched his right hind out behind him! And each time he did a little grunty thing with it. The third time.... I was laughing out loud... he actually grunted like a little guinea pig 3 short quick grunts. Ha ha.. Then farted. Feeling good buddy?! But he was fussy when she got to his neck, but she did manage a really good release right at like... C4-C5 on the left. :) 

So yeah... a good day! Although I did notice he was starting to look like he is standing tipped forward over his feet, rather than nice and square. Sigh... don't panic yet Holly.. don't panic yet!