Today started out pretty rough. I got to the barn as usual at 6:30 and started bringing in horses. However, shortly after I got a call from the others saying that they decided not to start until 7:30, since we had a long day the day before. I went back to the house and decided to work out, which was fine since I had not really had much chance to do that since I got here. I got back to work feeling great and I decided to tackle the job of feeding the outside herds on my own for the first time. That is when it started going downhill.

Feeding the herds is a big job, which involves driving around the entire property on a golf cart loaded with huge a bucket of oats, various smaller buckets with particular feed for particular horses, and 3 different kinds of supplements. You have to know which horse gets which feed, how much, as well as what supplements. That part went fine. However, another part of the job is herding various herds of horses into stalls to feed them. There are mares and babies, yearlings and two year olds, and tease mares. When I brought the yearlings in, I was missing 2 horses, so I went back out to the pasture (which is huge and has 3 sections), almost got stuck out there in the golf cart, and could not find them. Come to find out that 2 had been left in to show clients. Would have been nice to know! Also, herding the horses into their stalls is really a two person job, since they are all trying to get into the same stalls, and every time you turn around a horse is trying to get into the oats, and one of the stalls does not latch well so that causes problems as well. After I fed those horses, I brought in the tease mares, and had too many horses! I had to have someone come out for the extraneous mares.

Working horses went a little better. Today was not dressage intensive, as we had the vet out treating horses all day. I free jumped some horses, including Glory, who is a really cute jumper, and also went on a trail ride. I did work one horse in the ring, and she wanted to buck every time we went into the right lead canter.

Tomorrow is my birthday, so I am taking the morning off to go to the Temple with Erin. My friends (the other working students) also want to go into Gainesville tonight for a bit, so that should be fun.