Signs

As I've been saying, Carmen is showing lots of signs of becoming a sensible mature horse. For example, our ground tying is progressing very nicely. She generally stays when I ask her to but there are usually 1-2 corrections initially. The other day I was grooming her and she was standing there with her head lowered enjoying the attention and Irish was eating hay in the stall. I was brushing out her tail when all of a sudden there was a loud BANG of Irish kicking thew wall and then bolting out into the field. Both Carmen and I leapt a few feet into the air. I just had time to think Oh No, she's going to bolt but she didn't. She did a bit of prance with her feet and then stopped and looked at me wide eyed.
Carmen What the heck was that? 
Me: I think the cat in the rafters startled him. 
Carmen: sigh
Me: exactly. 
And I resumed my grooming while she went back to dozing. Inwardly I was gleeful. Her not running away when she could was huge.

I like to track when I ride on the calendar. That helps me to stay honest with myself about how much schooling I'm actually doing. All I do is mark 'R' on the calendar in red marker. If there's something exceptional I will make a note but mostly I don't. Usually the 'exceptional' stuff finds its way into my blog. The week of March 7-13 was great- I actually got to ride 5 times. This week between work and the weather I only managed to ride today.

Before that I was out puttering around the barn when I saw Irish go into alert mode. I looked to see what he was looking at and then I heard it. I couldn't figure out what it was until it came around the bend of the road. It was a child driving a small toy car, with her parents (I think a girl, it was hard to tell from so far away), followed by 2-3 teenagers and about 3-4 dogs. I may have the numbers wrong but it looked like a parade. I waved to them and turned back to Irish. He was prancing and trotting and getting agitated. Carmen watched them alertly but didn't move. I didn't get video of Irish running around but I did get this:

What I love is that she's quiet and quite clearly looking to me for direction. Not Irish. Irish is looking at me too but is pretty sure that he's telling me that it's the zombie apocalypse and we should flee.  I told them it was a parade. 

I knew right then that I was going to have a good ride.