Just Walking...

That was absolutely all me and Spencer did yesterday. He had a message on Monday so his owner didn't want him doing much.

I was supposed to meet up with a friend at the barn but she took forever and a half getting there, so he got an extra good brushing and a few crunchies just for something to do. Except he thought I had loads more and kept rubbing the inside of his upper lip all over my arm and shoulder, which was half cute, half kind of gross.  He stood still really well in the barn, which is great, he used to have some problems standing still especially when he was the only horse in the barn, but he was super good. Finally we couldn't wait any longer for her to show up so I took him into the arena and we wandered around, did lots of circles and serpentines and what not at the walk and by the time my friend showed up and got into the arena, we were pretty much done.
So I decided to try riding him bare back, his owner hasn't so I wasn't sure what he would be like, but after Diesel, he couldn't be that bad.... And he wasn't, again all we did was walk, things maybe different at the canter/trot. He was most displeased when I took him back to the mounting block and it took several tries before he would stand still, but eventually I was on and we just wandered around. He thought his saddle, which was sitting on the railing, deserved a lot of staring but he got moved away from it pretty quick so he wouldn't spook himself.
Overall he was really well behaved so I'd like to try it again with him later in the week and see how he is at the other gates. Diesel was really the only horse that was a lunatic when you rode bareback, even Pony was pretty good. It was actually really good for Tommy when trying to get him to move up into the canter without trotting. It always starts the same (my riding them at more than a walk when bareback), putting them on a relatively small circle and then doing a small bit of trotting (but not always, sometimes it's easier/more comfortable to just canter them) and then slowly letting the circle get bigger until we're going around the arena. Tommy was actually super good and we could even do small jumps, outside too! Which was pretty exciting because outside tends to be scarier. Only once did he have a freak out and that might have been because I accidentally kicked him when getting on or for some reason known only to him. He took of towards a jump which was perpendicular with the arena rail, and there was 3 options: stop, jump the arena or jump the jump. He choose to stop, and I feel on my ass. It was pretty funny in the end, and I'm just glad he didn't jump the arena!