Horsey School!

We found the camera.  It was in the toy room, underneath the rug, underneath a million toys!  YEAH! We found the camera!

This was Sophia's second day at Horsey School! and she happily road Hilda again.  Hilda is actually a white horse with black speckles, but she has issues with flies in the summer so she gets to wear this very fancy fully body fly cover.  Poor ole Hilda.  She is very sweet, and very responsive!

In the class they start out teaching the children how to get the horse to go at a walk, how to stop, and how to trot.  They were trying really hard to get Sophia to post/rise and trot here, but she didn't quite get it.  She was not deterred in the slightest and she smiled the ENTIRE time she was at the stables!

After riding Hilda, Sophia asked if she could learn how to take care of horses.  She was given Peanut, a Shetland pony to take care of.  There are over 50 horses at the stables and every night they all must be brushed down, have their feet picked, checked for any boo boos, fed, and either taken to the fields, or put in a stall. 

Here she was headed to the tack room to get a halter for Peanut and take off his bridle.

She is leaning to pick the hooves.  she also learned all the parts of the pony's hooves and what they felt like, which were soft and which were hard.  she was entranced!

Then a nice brushing down.  Notice that she is STILL smiling.  If you look closely you can see a black horse in the background peeking out of his stall.  He is SCARY!!  Every time one walked by him, he would pin his ears back to his head and give the meanest look EVER!  Not sure what made him so grumpy, but even the arrival of his evening hay did NOTHING to improve his vile mood.

This is where things to a turn for the worse.  Sophia was leading Peanut to the field, but Peanut found some yummy hay on the ground and wanted a closer look.  Since he didn't have a bridle and was instead wearing just a halter, he was less than responsive to Soph's attempts to get him moving.  She finally lost it, started crying, and declared that she hated all horses.  We eventually got Peanut to the field, and Sophia retracted her horse hating statement when she learned that horse haters were not allowed to come back for another lesson.  :)

Note to self:  bring snacks next time.  An hour of horse riding and grooming leaves a little girl with low blood sugar crankiness.  What is it about my family and low blood sugar crankiness!?!

The next lesson is on Sunday.  She can't wait!

There is one horse there at the stables in which I am in love!  His name is Tom and he is a Shire/Thoroughbred mix.  He is an enormous brown and white horse that has the hooves and size of a plough horse, but the mix with the Thoroughbred makes him much less docile than a plough horse and gives him more spirit.  He is so sweet.  I was scratching his ear and he went crazy, basically scratching his own ear with my hand.  I had to reach WAY up to get to his ear.  Will have to take a photo of my big friend to share.