Energy to Spare

The weather was cruddy today and the horses were only turned out for a few hours, so this afternoon Erin decided to give Guinness some exercise on the lunge line.  It wasn't all fun and games, though, as lunging is serious work.  Side reins and all.  But poor Guinny was feeling his oats, so to speak, and just couldn't help himself.  He was his usual goofy self in the cross-ties, very eager to get to work. It's a rare horse who gets truly excited at the thought of hard work, but he does!

So we started out (tried to) slowly with a nice brisk walk, but Big G hard a hard time containing himself.  He really preferred to careen around the arena like a madman, kicking up his heels and farting a lot.  But eventually we managed to get in a fairly respectable workout.... until another woman and her spazzy horse decided to lunge at the opposite end of the arena.  Guinness used that as an excuse to act like a maniac again, spooking and crow-hopping at least once per circle for several minutes.  He's quite nimble, that big fella, and it was definitely a sight to watch him leap up into the air and dive back down through his front legs.  Thank goodness the lunge line is very long so it wasn't too hard on his legs carrying on like that in circles.  We're not huge fans of lunging but sometimes it's the best we can do. It was hard to get him to calm down and just find his center, but we worked on it until he eventually did settle in and calm down.  Both horses were feeding off each other for awhile, and it required some pretty focused human energy on our parts to keep them from firing back up again. 

It was the first intense work that Guinness has had since he's been here in Seattle, and he's fitter than we thought.  We both have lessons scheduled for next week, the start of a work routine for all of us.  He seems to have worn himself out today, though, and we all feel better for it.  Because he was such a spaz he literally worked himself into a lather so we added a nice, warm bath at the end of the workout.  Of course today was a good day to spook multiple times in the wash stall -- the hose was potentially deadly, the rubber mats threatened to eat him, and the shampoo was visibly vicious.  But somehow we both survived and while Erin got soaked Big G got mostly clean.  And we both smell like Bigel Oil....