Gilly gets a hair cut and Pokey is nosey....

 Pokey says hey, what you doing with that camera??? No, no don't look at that horse I am much better looking than he is....he doesn't have a cute pink nose like me and just look at these whiskers, cute huh????

 Gilly has been into the burs so much that I finally decided to trim some of his mane off because he will just get into the burs again....so here he is with a trim and a big chunk out of it by his withers that he rubbed off or Pokey chewed off, I am not sure which!

 Gilly was giving me the eye for taking his picture, he thought he needed another treat. Not sure if this trim is correct but it still is long enough for me to grab if I need too. Speaking of grabbing mane let me tell you all what Gilly did this evening when we were riding.

After mowing the yard I decided to go for a ride. It was pretty hot today, yes, I said HOT so I didn't ride earlier thought I would wait until it was a little cooler for Gil since he has a lot of winter hair already. So about 4 this afternoon I saddled up and started riding. We just rode around the farm, back the hollow, up on the hill to check the water overflow. Just some easy riding first, then we went to the hay field to do some trot work. I had mowed a track around the field (this field would make a really nice arena but right now it's a hay field, it works)

We did trotting, with me posting sometimes and sometimes working on my sitting trot....this one is still hard for me to do on this lofty moving boy. Of course Pokey had to run along side us by the fence, but he had to add a little buck or two as we went past. Gilly paid not attention except for the turn of an ear toward him, he didn't speed up or spook when Pokey did his shenanigans.

We had been working for awhile and I decided that we could do a canter up along the fence and when I asked him to he decided to do a crow hop, brat, well I am happy to say that he didn't unseat me, I didn't grab the grab strap, I held the reins steady and rode it out, didn't stop, made him continue on at a trot. I should have asked for the canter again but didn't we just trotted and trotted some more. Since he wanted to be a bugger he had to do a lot MORE work, and some side passes too. Wonder if he knows he could have gone to eat his dinner a lot sooner if he had been good and did what I ask him to do. No, of course not but it made me feel good to make him work some more! LOL

This is a huge boost for my confidence and tomorrow we will work on the canter again! I think tomorrow I will have the dressage whip handy, sometimes a little smack on the butt will get him thorough the hip hops. Now here is a question I have; I have been told that lazy horses want to buck when they don't want to do something? I wonder why? That seems to me a lot more work to kick that big ole' butt up in the air than just popping into a canter.

 Pokey says one more look at my cuteness; this is me trying to bite a new Himalayan salt/mineral rock. No luck, it's hard as a rock but it sure tastes good!!!!

More later!!!