The farrier
Honeybear went to Pine Dell Farm when everyone was there last Thursday. Children came running up to him...but I cautioned them to go slow. They petted him, an older young girls stayed with him about 20 minutes and rubbed him and told him how beautiful he was.
Horses kept coming into the barn and walking past him. He was pretty excited about that!
Honeybear watched his friend Sage get shod for a while, and then we went into the arena. There were 4 horses in there being pretty quiet. He was snorting and huffing at them....Big Horses are a BIG novelty to him. We tried playing our games with the big horses standing around, but his attention wandered. Then the big horses starting moving around the arena...whoopee!
The instructor of the 4 young girls taking lessons kept watching Honeybear run around me in circles with all that action...she kept yelling, "I WANT HIM!"
We managed to play our games and then went back for our turn with the farrier...who is a natural horseman too. We did great with three legs, but had trouble with one back leg. so the farrier got to turn Honeybear's forequarters around on his least favorite side for humans to stand. I got a nice learning experience watching Tony deal with opposition reflex. Everytime Tony couldn't pick up that back leg, he would go right back up to the front and make Honeybear turn. It only took 3-4 times of this and Honeybear was begging Tony to go back and pick up his back foot.
We went home in triumph...after another slew of people came into the barn and rubbed him.
