Pups and Ponies

I hauled Lily to my sisters' place at Colburn yesterday and did some riding, both in the arena and outside.  

Throughout her riding career, Lily has functioned much better as a solo horse than a groupie. That tendency became evident yesterday.

She met Kevin's new horse Lucky for the first time in the arena and basically took the new relationship all in stride, behaving better than usual, in fact, as we walked and jogged around and even crossed over the trail class bridge prop a few times.  

When we moved outside, however, and Lily spotted Lucky, only to watch him disappear from view, her usual "Lily behaving badly"  session began. 

How dare that horse stay out of my sight or walk away from me???  

That's pretty much the message Lily gives while nickering and prancing and maybe even some basic rearing.  

When horses in a group situation do anything that upsets Lily's routine, her demeanor changes and the "pleasure" of riding her turns unpleasant. 

So, when Lucky disappeared from her sight and the presence of Laurie's horse Pache---all of two feet away from her---failed to assuage Lily's hissy fit, Laurie and I rode forward until Lily settled down at which time I decided hit the ground on my own volition rather than on Lily's schedule. 

I found a hillside and dismounted, not without some knee pain from the shock of hitting the ground from that tall mare but certainly without the potential massive pain that could come from being dumped. 

Once Lily was loaded and happily munching on alfalfa in the trailer, I snapped some photos of my siblings enjoying their horses on some mini trail rides around the farm. Quite the colorful lot. 

Of course, I would have preferred having even more color in the picture, but it's not easy doing selfies with 10 seconds to hit the camera button and then race over and jump up on that 16-hand mare.  

For the record, the racing over and jumping up on Lily will never happen again in my lifetime, even if we're not doing a selfie. 

By the time we left my sisters' farm, the temperature had soared, and it was obvious a hot, summer afternoon would slow things down a bit. 

So, I changed into shorts, took it easy and took a few more photos of horses around the neighborhood. 

Later, Debbie brought Joe over to play with Liam.  Liam and Joe became instant buddies the moment they first met, and that friendship continues as the older dogs are content to sit and watch as they race around, roll around, tackle each other, only stopping when their moms tell them it's time. 

I should mention that the reason their moms decided it was time dealt more with hungry mosquitoes than frolicking pups. 

So, with tongues hanging out, Liam retired to the house while Joe went home for his beauty rest.  

Summer time. The livin' is easy and the critters are fun---most of the time. 

Happy Tuesday.