Thankfully, the weather man was wrong about today. It did not snow, rain, or freeze, all of which I was very thankful for. Every day for the past week Marley has found the muddiest spot possible and either rolled or slept in it, so he desperately needed a bath. It was still a little cold for a full bath, but I was able to scrub his legs and his tail. It made such a difference... I had almost forgotten that Marley had white legs.
It was a busy day at the Barn and Marley met lots of new people. Katherine brought her husband Lyle out and we met a few new people at the barn as well. I always love introducing Marley to people, one because I think he is great, but mostly because Marley is still apprehensive about meeting new people. It is great training for him to have people walking up and talking, petting him, feeding him carrots, etc. He did so well and really took everything in stride today. He had multiple people petting on him at once while he was tied up, and he seemed happy to have the attention.
I did some ground work to start our session out, and moved slowly into riding. I wasn't really on a time crunch today so I spent a lot of time with Marley. We rode in the smaller arena today because the large one had a horse turned out in it, and Marley was actually about to hold a relatively balanced canter in a much smaller space than he is used to. Overall, Marley did awesome today. He has really made some progress this week with his confidence level.
After a great ride Katherine and Lyle helped me clean our Marley's pen and fill his shelter with lots of clean shavings. After the 2 days of pouring rain we had last week, I had to strip Marley's shelter to let it dry out. It took 3 wheelbarrows full of shavings to make a nice bed for Marley, and I'm hoping he uses it.
Katherine got tons of photos today, and I'm sure there are lots of great ones to put up. I'll post them as soon as she gets them to me!
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