Playday with Louie

I went to the barn this evening with the intention of riding Louie again. When I drove in, I could see the boys out in their pasture and Louie was looking thoroughly disgusted with Prize. Prize kept approaching him but Louie wanted nothing to do with him and was defending his space vigorously. I thought it might be a problem leading them up to the barn and considered bringing them in separately. But, when they came to the gate, they stood quietly and left each other alone. It's what I've been teaching them to do and I guess it's working. They led in quietly.

Once in his stall, Louie still looked out of sorts. So, I decided to just have a fun easy session with him tonight instead of riding. I first turned him loose in the arena to run and roll, both of which he did. Then we played fetch, practiced bowing and stepping up on the mounting block. I couldn't put anything down though as he kept picking thing back up and giving them to me. I then got out a ground pole and we practiced sidepassing over it. It's been a while since we've done this and he didn't get it right at first. I grabbed his halter at one point to get him into the proper position and that made him all kinds of disgusted. His expressions were priceless. He flattened his ears (not in a nasty way) and shook his head at me and you could just see he was saying, "give me a minute, I'll figure it out on my own!". When I continued to hold him, he just stopped trying. I let him go and he walked off in disgust. He soon came back though and was ready to try again, ON HIS OWN, thank you very much! LOL. And he did get it and did it very well.

When we were done, Louie seemed to be in a much better mood. When I led him into his stall, he suddenly stopped and snorted, then carefully lowered his head towards the corner. Well, there was Easter the goat laying in his hay happily munching away. I made a move to shoo her out of the stall and she jumped out and hit both of Louie water buckets in her rush to get out spooking the heck out of Louie and dousing me with water. Silly goat!