Saturday July 11 was our first day on the 2015 Headwaters Stable Tour. Our second day is July 25. Our farm was open to visitors from 1:00 till 3:00. We decided we’d wait till someone came before we fetched a horse from a paddock. At 1:00 two people arrived! Bill entertained them at Pax’s paddock explaining that 2015 is the 350th Anniversary of the Canadian horse being in Canada while I fetched Kye.
Kye, Spring Song and Zelador took turns entertaining the people. Cassie’s Border Collie, K-8, filled the gap while I returned one horse to the barn and brought another one to the arena.
Here are a few if the fun things Zelador did yesterday:
1. He was at liberty in the arena and went to the low hanging banner, indicated it with his head and looked at me. I responded, “Yes, you’re right, we do have new banners in the arena.” The new banners are up high.
2. I was explaining to the audience that for most horses when preparing to sit on a bean bag I have to have the halter on the horse with the leadline so I can help the horse sit accurately. The bean bag is huge, but a horse that’s rushing to sit could position his hind end off to one side and possibly slip onto the floor. I don’t want that to happen because it just might scare the horse and put a damper on his sitting career. BUT quite often Zelador is able to sit at liberty. He was standing on the pedestal, taking all this in. I said, “Zelador, let’s go to the bean bag.” It was about 15 feet away. He CANTERED to it (pretty hard to do in that short space) spun around, did a little hippity-hop, slowed right down, calmly backed up, positioned himself perfectly and SAT.
3. I brought out the tub for him to put a foot “in the middle”. I was explaining that when he first saw the tubs he picked them up and brought them to me. Then he stacked them, finally he actually put a foot in the middle of one. Well, when I called to him to step “in the middle” he came down from the pedestal, walked over the tub and accurately placed a hind hoof in the middle. No pre-school front foot stuff for him!!!!