Day 259

I was all excited to ride Harry after a stressful week at school, but when we got out there, as I was brushing him, I noticed he was bleeding on his back right hock. After cleaning it up, the swelling went down to just a large bump. After inspecting his stall, since he hasn't been outside, I could only find a couple of places where there were flat screws a little bit out, but they were dull...I could only guess that he got mad at his neighbor Dora (she's in heat) and kicked and scraped his leg during the kick. After we cleaned him up, I brought him in the arena to longe a little bit. He walked, although at one point on a reverse he started to speed up a little, but he started limping pretty badly, so he went back down to a walk. After a good amount of walking just to get the blood flowing, I figured "Heck, I might as well play some games with him" since I couldn't ride him. We played the Friendly Game, during which I was super happy because he finally let me swing the rope over his back. We played a little Yo-Yo game and the Porcupine game in one direction, because the other direction he looked like he was dragging his bad leg, so I stopped. He was really responsive in the direction he was good at though! Then I just walked backwards and he followed me across the soundboard at a walk, then I put him in to rest.

I rode Brie and my mom rode Nina. Brie was so snotty today! She tried to bite Sadie and Harry as they walked by her on the cross tie! But you couldn't tell that from her ride. She was a fantastic ride today. Very calm, very responsive. Most of the time I just let her go where she wanted though, since I wasn't in the mood for working very hard. We let Nina and Brie chase each other around the arena, then they followed each other in circles, all while we did nothing! It was quite cute.

Mom pointed out that Brie is not as collected as she used to be and I had noticed that. I think it's just because we've been focusing in Harry and Nina since they show and kind of letting Brie just do whatever. We're going to put the rear end collector on her next weekend, maybe the draw reins. I am not a fan of those reins!