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glenatronWe took the day off because we had the horse dentist coming out to the ponies and we felt we deserved a bit of time off.
It was the nicest weather we've had all week and the ponies were both very well behaved for the dentist- which he made easy by being very soft and gentle and businesslike about fixing their teeth up. Zorro's weren't as bad as I feared- in fact it transpired his teeth were a little less bad than Small's - whether he had met a dentist before was unclear.
We took the opportunity to give the ponies some serious grooming and let them have their rugs off for a bit. Then![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gemmabowles came to visit and was every bit as charming as one would expect and more so. It's always nice to meet imaginary internet friends in real life and find they are awesome there as well. She got to say hello to the boys and we all got to meet Toby, her dog. Zorro was quite intrigued:
Formalities and pony-meetings complete we went down to the village pub for an exceptionally tasty lunch, which was really enjoyable. Then Gemma went off to complete her day's tasks and we went back up to the yard. It was sunny and nice and it seemed a shame not to be playing with ponies so we brought them back in and went down to the school. I didn't want to overheat Zorro and risk having to dry off a sweaty pony so I figured if I was going to ride I should do it bareback. I discovered that it was quite a while since I'd done any bareback riding and I had somewhat lost the knack of it. Zorro kept stopping because he thought I was going to fall off. Once I found the knack again it was really nice to have all that feeling of his shoulders and back moving and also very nice and warm. I think maybe I'll be doing more of that over the winter- having built in central heating is one of the best things about the whole horses-as-transport idea.
sleepsy_mouse had to go off to town to talk to an agency so I took the opportunity to shift a few barrowloads of poo from the field ( I got 5!) before giving the boys dinner and heading home.
In the evening we wandered over to my parents' house to say hello to them and to play with a puppy. Pippa was very excited to see us and bounced and squeaked and fell over her own feet a whole lot.sleepsy_mouse has been introducing her and mum and dad to the clicker and she is learning amazingly fast. She has got sitting and lying down already and in about five minutes sleepsy_mouse had "sit" associated with a verbal cue instead of just following a gesture. Pippa will be ever so easy to train but keeping thinking up things for her to do will be more of a challenge. Whenever we see her she seems to have doubled in size and she's starting to give us a better idea of how she will look as a grown up dog. Some things haven't changed though - she still loves gnarling and colourful socks are apparently the best thing ever:
It was the nicest weather we've had all week and the ponies were both very well behaved for the dentist- which he made easy by being very soft and gentle and businesslike about fixing their teeth up. Zorro's weren't as bad as I feared- in fact it transpired his teeth were a little less bad than Small's - whether he had met a dentist before was unclear.
We took the opportunity to give the ponies some serious grooming and let them have their rugs off for a bit. Then
gemmabowles came to visit and was every bit as charming as one would expect and more so. It's always nice to meet imaginary internet friends in real life and find they are awesome there as well. She got to say hello to the boys and we all got to meet Toby, her dog. Zorro was quite intrigued:Formalities and pony-meetings complete we went down to the village pub for an exceptionally tasty lunch, which was really enjoyable. Then Gemma went off to complete her day's tasks and we went back up to the yard. It was sunny and nice and it seemed a shame not to be playing with ponies so we brought them back in and went down to the school. I didn't want to overheat Zorro and risk having to dry off a sweaty pony so I figured if I was going to ride I should do it bareback. I discovered that it was quite a while since I'd done any bareback riding and I had somewhat lost the knack of it. Zorro kept stopping because he thought I was going to fall off. Once I found the knack again it was really nice to have all that feeling of his shoulders and back moving and also very nice and warm. I think maybe I'll be doing more of that over the winter- having built in central heating is one of the best things about the whole horses-as-transport idea.
sleepsy_mouse had to go off to town to talk to an agency so I took the opportunity to shift a few barrowloads of poo from the field ( I got 5!) before giving the boys dinner and heading home.In the evening we wandered over to my parents' house to say hello to them and to play with a puppy. Pippa was very excited to see us and bounced and squeaked and fell over her own feet a whole lot.
sleepsy_mouse has been introducing her and mum and dad to the clicker and she is learning amazingly fast. She has got sitting and lying down already and in about five minutes sleepsy_mouse had "sit" associated with a verbal cue instead of just following a gesture. Pippa will be ever so easy to train but keeping thinking up things for her to do will be more of a challenge. Whenever we see her she seems to have doubled in size and she's starting to give us a better idea of how she will look as a grown up dog. Some things haven't changed though - she still loves gnarling and colourful socks are apparently the best thing ever: