Busy days

Busy, busy, busy around here right now.

Have had grandparents staying, and a family dinner for Ryan's 18th birthday to organise. All the food made here and then transported along with 4 adults to Hamilton. And it all made it safely!

Consequently there hasn't been a lot of riding happening. Summer of course, you can't put a saddle on right now (even if we did have one that fitted) so I have been concentrating what little spare time on Chief.
Today we did some ground work with the scary tarpaulin before some riding. It was time to deal with an issue that's been developing.

Because it's so important to me, I spend lots of time ensuring that horses who get started here, are good at standing still.
When Chief was started, he was reasonably good, but after being away for those few day, he came back with a go forward attitude that did not involve standing still.
Of course I have memories, of standing still arguments we had when long reining. These did in a couple of occasions, result in Chief rearing as he tried to take charge. Hence my reluctance of late to deal with this issue.

But today, feeling super tired and like I just didn't care what happened, we dealt with the standing issue. It had even got to the point where he was rushing off as soon as you were sitting and as soon as you picked up a contact, he would fight it to go on.
Patience and persistence won out in the end. We didn't get out of the small yard at all but it had to happen. Tomorrow we will start there again and try out our newly remembered stand in a larger area.