It’s been a long day.  I did some trimming this morning while Anna and the kids did chores.  After lunch, we had a swim with some friends, then back home to ride some horses.  Vicki spent some time riding Devil bareback, including jumping him to get ready for the show tomorrow.  Of course, tomorrow she will likely be using a saddle.  Alex and Vicki both rode Nike for a short session.  After that, Vicki rode Dakota (her third ride for the day), Amanda rode Huey, and Alexis rode Ace.  Anna and I were able to go for a short trail ride to evaluate Teddy on the trails.  Teddy is making great progress with he fear of ears being handled.  We are able to halter him reliably and bridle him, although it requires disassembling the bridle.  He is not ready to have a bridle passed over his ears and it requires patience to put the brow band back across his head.  Anna has been working on this with him every day, and he is showing a lot of improvement.  I am confident he will continue to get better and we will get past the problems eventually.

On our trail ride, I was on Mojo and Anna was on Teddy.  We just did a 5 mile ride because it was late and the deer flies were ridiculously bad.  I had a few that made it into my mouth, my ears, and swarmed my eyes.  Teddy is definitely an Arab.  He has a nice solid trot, but does have that Arab mindset that large rocks and logs could be a hiding place for a mountain lion.  Nothing too dramatic, but just enough to keep the ride interesting.  We have introduced Teddy to Glove boots.  He wasn’t too fond of them on his hind feet, but once we got moving, he didn’t have time to worry about it.

I did manage to take a short video while we trotted through the corn fields.  Anna thinks maybe we should invest in a GoPro to mount on my helmet.  Teddy walked through water, has a nice ground covering trot, and Anna looks good on him.  His first trail ride was an overwhelming success.  The only thing he is lacking is conditioning, but we know how to fix that.