Peppermints

I have to recap last night before sharing what happened today. We rode in the round pen again and Ashke did awesome! He startled a couple of times (a rabbit with big icky teeth) but for the most part did wonderful for me. Saddling him was a piece of cake - he is no longer fighting me when the girth is tightened. The only bad thing was he managed to nick his front foot with one of his back feet and ended up with blood and some tenderness. I treated it with iodine and bag balm. On Friday we will be making a special trip to Murdocks to find some boots. This is the second time he's nicked himself. Time to put a stop to that.

Tonight was his lay back and relax night. We needed to go shopping at Costco so before we did that we went to the barn and turned him out into the pasture. We left him there while we went and did our family shopping. As we were driving away I had my window down and whistled at him. His head went up and he watched us go. We spent about an hour getting dinner and doing our shopping and then went back to the stable. He was out in the middle of the pasture and I wondered how difficult it would be to catch him, seeing as it was almost dark. As soon as he saw J he started walking across the pasture to meet us at the gate. J said that when he saw me he veered to the right and came up to me.

I had a pocket full of peppermints I snagged from work. I popped one open and offered it to him. He was so funny. He was trying to eat it but wasn't sure how. He kept dropping it out of his mouth and then asking for another one. He bit one of them and then let the pieces dribble out of his mouth. The entire time he was snorting softly like he couldn't believe how tasty they were. J thought he was trying to suck on the piece of peppermint. He declined to play in the field with T and seemed genuinely concerned he wasn't going to be taken back to his stall. He was very happy when we put him back into his stall. J gave him a decent handfull of carrots, seeing as we got them at Costco, and I left him a couple of more peppermints. He loves carrots, but he also likes peppermints. I just don't think he understands how to eat them. He was just too cute.

We loves him. More photos tomorrow. I promise!