Woodsmith Farm

With a lot of riding and driving just around the corner, I wanted to get the arena ready to go for the season.  There were a couple of thin spots so I left work about 3:30 to direct the Mercer Stone drivers on where to dump a couple of loads of Class I.

After the stone was delivery was done, I let Emma and Will out of the field.  Emma was first on the list to drive and for some reason I chose to leave her on the snaffle setting for our first drive of the season.  Emma is good but she can get pretty excited and motivated and she's a lot of horse to hold back if she's feeling good like she was today.  For the most part we kept things under control though and had a  really nice drive.  I am looking forward to another year of driving with her.

Will is missing a front shoe so I only decided to ground drive him in full harness around the farm instead of ride or hitch him.  He's still very green in the carriage so ground driving was good for me and him.  Plus I am thinking about driving him and Emma as a tandem, with him in the lead, so I wanted to see how he walked on in blinders after being off all winter.  He was perfect and never blinked an eye.  We stood in the arena while TJ zoomed around him on the tractor moving the Class I around and again he stood there as calm as can be.  Will is funny though.  He is scared odd things and I soon remembered that he is scared to death of the black rubber mat on the ground at the wash area.  We went through this last year and TJ started laughing as he went by on the tractor when he saw my dilemma.  I calmly told Will the black mat was not going to hurt him and he eventually walked on it; but it took a few minutes.  He kept nuzzling my feet, which were on the mat, as if he was concerned that they shouldn't be there.

After the drives, I finally got the knots out of Toad's mane and put Cowboy Magic on both his and Dan's mane.  I have never let Toad get knots in his mane, but this year I seriously dropped the ball on grooming everyone.  Thank goodness no one got the funk though and a once over with the shedding blade confirmed this.  Bluff kept following me around like she wanted something but she wouldn't let me catch her unfortunately.  She has a knot in her mane that I will get out when I corral her to be wormed or maybe I will bribe her with an apple.  She lets me rub all over her while she eats in the mornings but if I act like I really want to do something with her she bolts.  I spent some time grooming D. and Odessa as well.

So, tonight was a great night.  Thanks TJ for the arena grading and painting!