Ringing in a New Year

So I know that people are sort of split over the issue of this year... either the world will end or there will just be excessive hype like in 2000 ("Holy Christ, the Y2K bug will infect us all!") but Dec. 23, 2012 will dawn and it will turn out to have been just another yesterday.  But here in VA it's been strangely mild for a majority of the time thus far this winter.  Blame global warming, blame the upcoming apocolypse, blame whoever you want, but I'm thanking Mother Nature or God, whoever's taking care of the temperature these days because I got to ride my horses on New Years Eve and it was almost 60 degrees!

Chatting and warming up

We decided to go ahead and take Boo and Reily over to the equestrian park again since we really don't know how many more of these nice days we're going to get.  I invited one of my old 4-H friends to come ride Boo so we could exercise them in the ring together at the same time and see how Reily would take it.  He always wanted to drift towards wherever Boo was in the ring but if I put my leg on him he listened and kept straight like an old pro.

Just going for a trot

Of course, it was nice when we got there but shortly after we had warmed up the wind started to pick up and the sun disappeard behind the clouds so it started to get a little more chilly.  We were lucky because we were riding but my poor boyfriend definitely got cold standing there playing camera man.   Up to this point I'd only done about 90% walking and hill climbing with Reily and about 10% trot work, but he stayed perfectly calm and listening to me even when the wind really picked up.  What a good baby!  He wasn't rushing at all so just for kicks I asked him for a canter to see how he'd respond.  He picked up his right lead right off the bat, he was fast, but not running away just fast.  That doesn't bother me one bit though, it was just his first time, he's got no substantial top line, and he's not totally balanced in his new job, so going a little fast probably helped him feel more stablized at first.  Lucky me, my boyfriend got a video of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7cz2DAfeXA&context=C329ad3bADOEgsToPDskKIhWJOPIZWjgVv6EZm-lrw. I just love his trot, it's big and forward, and one of these days I'll think to take a picture of his hoof prints, because his over reach (hence why he's only wearing 1 bell boot, he ripped the other one right off and we were waiting to receive the replacement still) is at least a whole hoof length in front of his front foot fall!  I can't wait to start building his top line and teaching him to go on contact.  He has great extension when you ask for it!