Sage photos from wintery sunny day...
"We see you in there! Hand over the food..."
The side of the greenhouse where Sage and I practice sideways game...
Trailer's not getting much use these days...
Wintery...
Looks like its snowing, but really its a dirty window... ;)
Mom and I played with both horses earlier this week and had little 'contests.' I would think of something to do, like "Turn your horse to the right using driving game on the front end" and then I'd count to 3, and away we would go. Then Mom would call out something like "Back your horse 5 steps through the deep snow using yoyo game" and we'd try that next.
Thea is far and away more responsive than Sage at this point. We both laughed a lot because Sage was clearly in a "what? You expect me to do something?!? kind of a mood, and Thea was totally focused on Mom and ready to go. So Thea 'won' most of the little games...it was fun because we both had to use our imagination in coming up with new questions to ask the horses. It was also interesting just to observe the pace at which each horse did things. Even in his more together moments towards the end of our little session, Sage still takes each step more slowly, where as Thea is quicker to react and go ZOOM! in the direction you requested of her. Interesting...
The last thing we did was walk the horses into the deep snow (maybe 18"?) and ask them to back out...Sage did it with a minimum of protesting. It was clear he didn't like feeling such deep snow around his legs while backing towards stuff he couldn't see, but he trusted me enough to do it when I asked firmly.
Thea was hysterical...she very tentatively took a step or two backwards, glared at my mom, pawed at the snow furiously, glared at my mom again...and when Mom continued asking her to back up Thea lay down and rolled quite defiantly in the deep snow. Too bad I missed it on camera...but batteries go quickly in the cold.