Today is Monday, October 27th, and it's rainy and cold today. I have been home two days now since my week long trip in Florida. When I returned, my horses were in their full tilt winter coat and they'd been indoors for several days for their turnout. Their days of a leisurely breakfast, followed by grazing with friends in the sun, are over. Violet, my sweet, sweet girl, is suffering for the change. Her back legs are stocked up pretty badly. On Sunday and today I worked her a bit and rode her, and gave her turnout with her friends, and this evening I gave her a little bute, so I hope that takes the swelling down. I feel badly for her to go from a full day's turnout to more constrained circumstances, but I will work through it this winter!
Anyway, so here's what I know about my sweet girl. I've been working through Parelli and she's just the most intelligent, sweet, compliant girl. She loves a challenge and wants to please and is adorably kind. You would laugh if you saw us doing Parelli together. She is clearly the more intelligent of the two of us. I can just see her paying perfect attention trying to figure out what I want, and because I'm not very good at asking for it, she uses her intense intellect to try and guess. She anticipates and tries to leap eagerly to the task. Sometimes we actually communicate well and we are both super happy with our efforts. She licks her lips and grinds her teeth with happiness and rolls her head in for a big hug and kisses and whispers. And I get to praise, praise, praise her. And other times, she just dances circles around me, showing enthusiasm and joy about wanting to do the work, and making her "best guesses" about what I wanted.
I am the luckiest girl I know to have such a sweet, intelligent thoroughbred in my family! Bless her sweetness!