October 24

Today we went for a ride around the park, walked all the way around
the top end then up the hill and into the huge jumping arena. He was
very interested in the soft gravel and walked along with his nose on
the ground for a while :) Then we had a trot and canter around, he
was great, despite everything going on including Heather's dog yapping
away nonstop and people dropping off their recycling into the bins and
a big digger shoving greenwaste around into piles. Absolutely no
bother with any of that. And Heather's horse Roly was napping towards
Jimmy more than Jimmy towards him! He'd have liked to be close to Roly
the whole time, but when I said no he said okay then.

Then we went down the big hill to the creek and followed Roly through
that, preferring to step over rather than into it, but he didn't take
any flying leaps over :) Heather had her wee dog on a lead off the
side of her horse and Jimmy was slightly puzzled by that at first but
not bothered. On the way back to the paddock gate we went up to the
box on top of the hill and hopped up the bank and walked along,
baulked slightly in surprise at having to step off again and then did
it without any fuss. There were some people riding on the XC when we
got back, burning around and splashing thru the water jump but he was
more interested in eating his dinner than worrying about them.

He was very cute when I put him back out. There were 3 people on
horses, Roly had wandered off by himself, and Izzy's horse Sam who was
standing around socialising with the other horses. Jimmy wanted to say
hi to the other horses but he was a bit shy, he kind of thought about
going over, then changed his mind, then changed it back and went to
see them but stayed behind Sam, eventually he got brave enough to go
up and sniff one of the other horse's rumps (foolish) fortunately he
didn't get kicked. Then he got to sniff noses with one of the appys
and that pleased him I think to have made another friend. Then him and
Sam wandered off to eat the willow tree clippings that Izzy had
gathered on her ride :)

He was good to bridle today, backed up a couple steps then gave it up.
I was experimenting with fitting bridles so I had it on and off about
3 times, I'm sure the repetition was good for him. Oh and he has been
standing like a rock when I get on him from the ground, he's not fazed
by that now. And he was fine to catch. Yesterday I went down after
Levin show and took a feed, I went out there with just a handful of
feed and no rope (well it was in my pocket not my hand) and he thought
about running away before he got intrigued by what it was I was
holding so came over to see. Then I gave him a bit of it and he just
followed me back to the gate practically breathing down my neck to get
some more :) Today same thing, once he realised I had food he just
followed me to the gate. We had to put a rope over his neck because
Banjo was hogging the gate but he didn't care about that either.