Our Day With Skeeter

As most of you know by now, GunDiva is sort of laid up with a foot injury.  Crutches and wild horses don't go together really well so Bill and I volunteered to 'horse sit'.  OK, so it was really more of a fun day out with the kid's horse!

Skeeter gave us a hello nicker when we arrived and was plenty happy to get out of her 'room'.  She stood nicely to get her halter on and walked quietly out of the gate.  GunDiva had asked Bill to do a little quicker work with her; maybe see if she would trot on the lead line.

At first Skeeter wasn't too sure what was wanted of her - then she got a little too exuberant and discovered that Grandpa Bill could do the 'mean look' and say "No".  She actually took it quite well.

After several trips around the pen with good behavior, she got turned loose for so quiet time.

Time to go back to work....

Let's try some normal walk lead work, some turns, stops, stand, etc.

Watching this, it was becoming quite obvious this horse needed some 'play time'.  She was easy enough to catch, that it seemed OK to let her get a little wound up - and it didn't take much encouragement.  Both of my mustangs loved to play when they were young; shoot, they still do.  At 12 and 13 yo. they had a bucking play time this morning after breakfast.  I love to watch their moves.

I spent some time cleaning Skeeter's home pen and had given Bill's camera back to him.  I looked up just as a game of peek-a-boo was getting into good progress.  GunDiva posted that video on Facebook.  My camera has too high of resolution to upload from our own WiFi, but I got several really good videos and just had to laugh at the antics.  When Bill got Skeeter's attention and ran away from her, you could see the lightbulb come on and the games were on!  The trailer became the hiding place.  Skeeter would peek around to find Bill; he would jump out with arms flying and she would high kick and take off at a run - then turn back and come looking again.

She always understood when the 'play' was over and it was time to come back.  All of us tend to come to a stand still with the halter at our side and wiggle our fingers at our horse when we want them to come to us.  Skeeter has picked this up very quickly; it's a good signal that 'play' is over.

I got a chance to work with her a little; she was much more sedate with me and I didn't do any play.  It was getting too hot and she was beginning to tire.

I have a smaller bubble than Bill and tend to let the horse stay at my shoulder.  She did extremely well, stopping right beside me and waiting patiently.  I couldn't get her to move faster, but I think part of it was her getting tired.  She did think it was fun to play with the back of my hat one time.
We put her up and gave her a new treat for being so good:  black oil sunflower seeds.

She spent a minute blowing on them, scattering them around her bowl before she decided they might be edible.  What a sweet, sweet horse she is - and a lot of fun!  GunDiva got a winner.
Bionic Cowgirl

GunDiva in: Here's one of my favorite videos from yesterday.  You can actually see Beel playing with Skeeter.