There's bears in them there woods!

Hubby had his first Saturday off of work in two or three months, so we finally got some good, relaxed pony riding in. We ran into CL both days unfortunately. I guess it made for some laugh-track moments, but ohhh my goodness, does she live up to her name sometimes. Saturday, she came right when we were tacking up and getting ready to go out to the trails, and was hanging off of Bobby because he's "suuuuchhhh a goooood booooyyyy." Yo. Get off my horse. Nothing you do makes him a good horse. And as soon as she walked in she bent down to look at one of his legs and was like, "Oh, he had a little scratch after we took his boots off (after his lesson Tuesday) and I was just wondering if it was still there." A) You didn't come out for the rest of the week and look to see if it was there? What if it had been a real scratch and had stocked up or gotten something in it? B) It was probably just a sweat line.

Anyway. We went out with the dogs who, as soon as we let loose on the trail, Darcy took off after a turkey with Emily close on her heels yipping like the little coyote puppy she is. Darcy came back after they'd treed it  and barked at it for awhile, but Emily took longer. She is stupider. So we walked and trotted up and down the same section of trail for awhile waiting for my wayward Heeler. The bugs were horrendous and Bobby was seriously bugged (ba-dum bump) by them. He's got TB skin like tissue paper. He kept diving his head down to rub his face on his legs. Not a good thing for a semi-unbalanced baby going downhill. We didn't even make it past the swamp before he threw a serious pissy fit, backing up into Red despite my furious kicking to go forward before spinning around into the water and leaping out as I jumped off in the chance he spazzed and flipped over. He got a serious backing up ass whupping after that. I know the bugs are bad, and I know it's muggy and just making it worse, but you do. not. misbehave. I'm a hard ass. I don't care. I don't have sensitive princess horses that can't be bullied a little bit. We turned around and cantered back. At least it was a long grade hill so he got in a touch of the hill work he needs. And Red didn't attempt to take off with Hubby.

I let King Buggy have a blow out gallop on the track outside the barn and barely got him pulled back up. I think, once we have enough money that I can get back to the barn more than once a week, a gallop is going to have to be in his schedule once a week. His silly mind needs it to refocus.

Since we were only out on the trails for about 20 minutes--including the time it took us to get the dog backs, beat Bobby, and walk to and from the trail--Hubby said he wanted to try to jump Red a little bit. Let me preface the following by saying that I am not an instructor. I have less than zero ambition to become an instructor. Mostly this is because I don't know how to relay my brillance to others. What a shame.

So at the halt, I got Hubby into the "ideal" halfseat position with only minimal whining from him. He didn't want me to put his stirrups up a hole even though that would have seriously helped him keep his heels DOWN. He's had one real lesson his entire life--coincidentally from an eventing trainer--so he knows what he's supposed to do, but applying the mechanics is sometimes lost. His posting is getting better, and his canter is pretty decent, but his dang heels just seem to like pointing up no matter what. I let him jump Red over 2'3 a few times, and even though Red was a laaaaaaazy, lazy pony, they got over without injury. Not pretty, but something to go on, I guess.

We drove out to the gamelands a little farther from the barn after riding and a black bear cub crossed in front of the truck! We waited around for awhile to try to get a picture of it or another one, and about five minutes later, it passed the road again headed in the other direction farther down. Of course, me being a former suburbanite, as soon as I saw it, I let out a rather enthusiastic, "THERE IT IS!!! THERE IT IS!" The poor cub stopped in its tracks and put its cute ears up before hauling ass away into the hedgerow. Some wildlife observer I am.

do you see it?!

Yesterday, I made Hubby bring along the heavy machinery and drill holes into the standards. He redid all of them up to 3'6 and added a 3'3 hole. Now you can actually take out the pins without a hammer. Woo hoo! We need some more jump cups, but we did build a gate last night (but you don't get those fun pictures until it's hanging, which means you have to wait for Hubby to have time to run it down with the truck because it's not fitting in my Saturn), and we're going to budget in some money to make a few more standards. I want five jumps over all and each jump will ideally have two set of cups and poles a piece.

Of course, instead of jumping, we loaded the boys onto the trailer and headed down to where we saw the bear yesterday. Really, could we have done anything else?

There was a beautifully manicured path around the pond we started out at, but it quickly cut off into a bunch of overgrown wheat fields that we trapaized around in for awhile before dumping us out onto an old gravel road. We got slightly distracted by rasberries on the side of the road. Definitely a good idea to dismount your horse, drop the reins in the middle of nowhere, and eat berries when you saw a bear yesterday. We escaped unscathed--minus the berry stains on our hands--and wandered off the road down a grass path that might have been a really old road at some point.

The grass road eventually looped around to where the end of the real road we drove down yesterday ends--right where we saw the bear cub. I'm not going to lie. I kind of wanted to see some action, but we didn't see anything but a pair of Brittanies getting walked. We trotted alot at Bobby's insistence to try to ward off some of the flies, and finally cantered up a steep hill that dropped us into an old graveyard next to the real road. Bobby needs hill work. I'll say it again. And again. He lacks serious power going up them. When Red caught up to us, two beagles came out of the woods and one tried to eat Red. It nipped at his back leg, but as Red brought his foot up in a normal walk step, his foot clipped the dog under the chin and she decided maybe the evil ponies shouldn't be messed with. The other beagle was too retarded to do anything but wander along behind us until the two of them saw their owners loading several more dogs into their truck. They must have been running bunnies.

The best part about the whole day was that Red loaded and unloaded both at the barn and in the gamelands like a superstar. Maybe his brain turned back on to good pony.