Mo the Lansdscape Aritist!

I forgot to blog yesterday, but Mo and I had a great session. The best since I have been home - undersaddle at least. It wasnt terribly elaborate, but given Mo's recent proclivity for discontent while being ridden, I am particularly happy :-) We played with the cloverleaf pattern bridless at a walk trot and canter and were incredibly successful! YEY MO!

Then today! This morning I was feeling pretty ambitious. The riding ring has needed mowing for a while I keep ignoring it, hoping Candy will eat it all, but she doesnt and hasnt so I finally caved and got motivated enough to ask Aunty to show me how to operate the mower so I could. Mowing went great, and the ring looks fabulous now [except for the minor detail of me forgetting the mud in one corner and getting the tractor stuck... good thing we have a big tractor to unstick it later!]

Onto the weed eating! My least favorite part, the part with the most work to it, and also the part that really makes it look good when its done. I started pulling weeds by hand, then switched to a mixture of weed-eating and pulling and that worked fairly well until the charge died on the weed-eater. It was a good bunch of hours later anyways and the mosquitoes were coming out by then, and I had finished mostly one solid line of the fence, so I felt good about stopping.

The only other thing I really wanted to accomplish was trimming the trees that smack you every time you try to ride the rail on one side of the ring. For this I gathered some scissors, and my trusty Mo. Honestly, I was to lazy to halter her, so I just led her by the chin in to the arena and over to the mounting block. She was a doll and siddled right up for me to mount. The interesting part of this adventure was that the area where I needed to trim branches is actually the part of the ring that scares Mo. I am not sure why, I have done LOADS of approach and retreat with it, all kinds of squeeze game and she never relaxes all the way. I *think* its because last summer Legend [dog] would always jump out of the bushes over there and run at us.

Cleverly, I didnt realize this until we were already on our way walking over there, and I already had my mission in mind : Trim Branches. I dont know exactly how it happened or why, but maybe because my focus was elsewhere, Mo was perfect. She was my equine ladder and acted her part perfectly. She sidewaysed when I needed her to, back up when I needed her to, moved forwards, stood still, you name it, she did it! All in the name of good landscaping! HA!

Bareback and bridless to boot, so GO MO! I let her graze some after that, as the newly mown grass was EVER so much more enticing than the regular grass. Silly horsey.

:-)
S