Tuff Gets Worked!

First off, Happy New Year everyone! I for one am happy to see 2009 go! And looking forward to a great (and totally different) new year.

So Tuff finally made it into the new round pen! Which isn’t so ‘new’ anymore, lol. But it was to him! I got out of ‘jail’ early yesterday (yes, had to work on new years, yipee) and knew I had about an hour or so of daylight so I rushed into the house put all my warmest clothes on and grabbed my trusty, rusty steed (bike, lol) and got out there. I met the husband on the way out (yes, HE was off, sucker) and we headed out together.

The little bro in law has been training them to come up to the sound of a whistle. So he whipped that out and about 3 or4 minutes later here them came sashaying up the lane. Yeah! That definitely saves time (and effort, lol).

I was a little shocked when I got a good look at Tuff. He is a wooly beast (that didn’t shock me) and he WHITE! He’s lightened even more. He is also a good few inches taller. We may have made 14 hands finally! ;) He is bigger all around, hooves and all. His neck needs to catch up though. Which all the fuzzy hair doesn’t help it look longer either! I noticed I can’t lean over his back on my stomach anymore! I’ll have to bring me something to step on now to put weight on his back. ('I’m 5’7 by the way in case anyone is wanting to compare) I’m glad to see he is keeping his perty head his momma gave him!

So I took him straight out to the round pen. He was very alert! It was cold and a little breezy and he was checking it all out! We walked into the round pen and I led him around the perimeter a few rounds both ways to get him acclimated. He was pretty good, but like I said, very aware of everything! No spooks or yee haw moments though.

Once I let him out on the lead rope a bit to lunge he was looking all over and then walking with his nose on the ground on one half of the circle. It was pretty funny. I guess he was smelling all the other horses that had been in there. Everyone but his mama.

So after he showed me he wasn’t going to be a wild thing I took him to the side where our audience was (both BILs and the husband) and we swapped for the lunge line and got the whip. I rubbed him with that a few times (he’s only seen it once last summer) and off we went! I did a lot of transitions from walk to trot and vice versa since he was so interested in everything but me most of the time. As is demonstrated to the right, lol.

He did good though. Was quite responsive to my cues of walk, trot, woah, etc. I was pleased. He hasn’t been lunged in a good while. He does need some work on pulling though. He was making my arm sore with how hard he was leaning on the line. Ugh! Definitely need to work on that. It has never really been a problem lunging in the open though, strangely.

I called the husband over after a bit and he came in and lunged him as well. He did good! It was funny because Tuff kept looking at him with his ears pricked like “your not the one that usually does this!” lol, it was pretty cute.

By then it was pretty darn dark so we called it quits! I had Lee hold him for me while I picked his hooves up, then we took turns leaning on his back (which I was able to do because he was resting his foot) He wasn’t too sure about Lees weight on him, but we did it a few times until he settled then the husband lead him back to the pasture. After he let him go he started looking around like, hey, where did my peeps go?? They had apparently ditched him! So he looked a bit more then he did this funny half rear thing and bounced around a bit and took off up the lane after them. Silly boy.

Well thats all for now, till later!

Next Post: Tuff Undersaddle!