Guinny's Getting Fat!

Our boy's belly seems to be growing more rotund by the hour, despite the consistent work he's had in the last few weeks.  Erin has had the good fortune of being home more often than usual lately and she's taken advantage of that by spending a lot of time working Guinness.  Last week he was ridden 6 days in a row and, thankfully, by the end of the 6th ride he was quite tired!  It's not easy for us to keep up with the handsome fellow, so when we do manage to wear him out we count it as a personal victory.

Our lessons with Rachel are extremely helpful and we're excited to be moving Guinness to her new barn at the end of the month. There will only be 6 horses there and we're all eventing students at about the same level. Her property will allow Big G to be outside most of the day and when he's in his stall he's got a run attached to it so he can go in and out at will. And we are very excited about the miles of trails just over the hill (read: hackable distance) from the new facility. The thing we love to do most together is ride and it's our hope to find an extra horse every week to take out for a few hours on the trails. We're convinced that arena-only work melts their minds, and we want to have Guinny as happy and relaxed and fit as possible, so having the trails there is a huge plus.

Over the weekend the weather here was amazing so Guinness got to spend most of the day on Saturday outside in his paddock.  The quarantine is getting less restrictive over time and now the horses are able to get out with an empty paddock between them (so nobody sneezes on anybody else). Shanna, the former avid soccer player, took the opportunity to teach Big G some fancy new footwork. After he realized that the red Jolly Ball wasn't actually going to eat him he couldn't help himself.

In our rides with Rachel we're working on building up his hind-end fitness.  He's still a little weak back there compared to his muscular front end and she's showed us great exercises to help with that.  We're also practicing DAILY Scary Plastic Flower desensitization. It takes us awhile but we can eventually get to the point where we're calmly walking over the flowers on a loose rein. Unfortunately our boy's Flower Memory is short and the following day we have to start all over again, but hey.... we've all got issues, right?!  The good news is that (as long as there are no flowers next to it) he loves to jump. We've hopped over a few 2' rails in the last weeks and are really happy that Guinness enjoys jumping so much. He's great about rounding his back and picking up his feet, and once the human contingent gets into better shape we'll start jumping courses.

If this doesn't get him over his fear of flowers nothing will!

It was with some amazement that we learned that Guinness' ever-expending belly and his difficulty to tire out actually make sense -- he's been receiving (despite our repeated pleas to the contrary) two huge scoops of grain each day!  The combination of that and the excellent quality timothy hay he's eating make him awfully frisky. And now we finally understand why it's been so hard to get him to chill out -- the sweet Latino workers who feed the horses seem to think they're doing us a favor by giving Guinny so much grain, because everyone knows that food is love!  Hopefully the latest communique to the owner and her staff has remedied that, and soon it won't matter anyway since we're headed to a different facility in two weeks. But it was definitely an "A-ha!" moment for us to see all that grain in his bucket....

Notice the Giant Belly and the Look of Friskiness!

 As the weather gets warmer his coat gets even lovelier and Guinness is definitely the envy of the barn. Not that all the leaping about he does makes people want to actually climb aboard, but he is definitely a presence who demands an audience!  And we're extremely smitten with the handsome gent. When he's sufficiently tired and calm he's quite the snuggler and we think we've finally learned all his favorite Scratching Spots. Food is definitely the Main Path to Guinny's heart, but scratching his withers, shoulder and under his jowls is a sufficient detour....

We continue to learn from and be amazed by his cleverness, his sense of wonder and awe (even though the plastic flower thing is getting old) and his athleticism. Each week brings us closer together and we're confident that the move to Rachel's new barn (where she can ride him a few days a week and we can ride in private lessons the others) will prove to be beneficial to all.  He'll make new friends and get new fanny muscles, and we'll all have a good time in the gorgeous Pacific Northwest forests (where we anticipate a fair amount of Various Woodsy Things Desensitization Sessions).

We're intending to enter a local dressage show in May (after we get back from a week of vacation in Lexington, KY at the Rolex Three Day Event, of course) and once we have that on the books we'll be in touch. Guinness is very excited to have his entourage visit soon, but for now he's asked us to leave you with this parting shot: