Prize scares me. There is no doubt in my mind that she is part of some sort of evolutionary leap forward in horse brainpower.

Today, after slacking for entirely too long in the horse riding department, I decided to ride her. I decided to try out the new western saddle. This involved a lot of tinkering and fitting and moving various buckles. She was standing still by the lawn mover so I didn’t give much thought to what she was doing. When I finally paid attention I noticed that she was learning to work the gearshift. Yes, my horse can shift from neutral to forward to neutral to reverse and back again. The lawn mover was on flat ground so it didn’t go anywhere so she doesn’t realize that her new skill isn’t just a fun party trick but in fact the secret to harnessing artifical horsepower by real horses. Over the rest of the fitting she also learned to raise and lower the snowplow. That ended up being a favorite because of the satisfying BANG when the plow hit the hard ground. I am quite the scrooge for stopping that game just when it was getting good.

Then there was a lot of getting on and off while I tried to get the stirrups working correctly. This bored her to tears so she entertained herself by lining up with the mounting block smartly and then moving away as soon as I was ready to mount. These are the times that I want to beat her soundly because I know she’s doing it just to annoy me. But finally we got all the parts and pieces fitted correctly and had a brief ride. Mostly we walked around a bit and then worked on sideways, back, and various pivots. She is actually better at sideways than she was before her layoff.

I found out that I have quite short legs because the stirrups needed to go up on the top hole for my little legs to reach. Happily though the seat of the saddle is too big for me. In truth, I won’t be happy with that for long since it will be uncomfy to ride but I’m only doing brief spurts of cattle chasing in this saddle not riding all day long. I have the size of butt that makes me yearn for things to be too large for my behind. It doesn’t happen often. I had just come back from the store and trying on jeans. I was only able to get into a slightly acceptable size if I bought the kind with a bit of lycra in them. Very disheartening but at least the saddle will make my butt look small.