Back from Boarding School

 I brought Cinder back home to TCF on Saturday. I was so done with having my ponies at two different barns and was beyond ready to have them be back together again.

 In all honesty, Cinder is not where I was hoping she’d be after being in full training for 4.5 months. A good part of that was due to waiting for the farrier to put shoes on her and for the three weeks lost due to the wildfires and smoke. But in that 4.5 months I only saw her worked once, and never got any pics or videos of her under saddle. Trainer S agrees that Cin isn’t as far along as she should be and has offered to come to TCF in December to work her for free. I have some thoughts and feelings about this and am not ready to decide either way yet. 

The kids were very happy to see each other again 

When I hauled Cinder over to S in July, it took maybe a minute to load her in the trailer. She stopped before stepping up, but then happily jumped in after a quick pause. She was nervous and sweaty when we got to the training barn but I chalked it up to not hauling anywhere for a year and being hauled alone. S hauled her to GS and said it took over two hours to get her to load in the trailer. And at one point she laid down in the trailer. I was a little worried about bringing her home, and I had a reason to be. It took almost two hours again to load her and we were only able to because S showed up and helped. I was beyond frustrated and so upset that the horse I dropped off at training had better manners than the horse I picked up. 

This makes it worth it 

But Cinder unloaded great at TCF and immediately settled in. Peebs and Scottie were more worked up about her coming home than she was. When I went out to the barn Sunday morning and took Cinder out to groom her, Peebs started screaming for her. We were all of 20ft away from him. I free lunged Cin in the arena and Peebs would periodically scream for her. Thankfully Cinder didn’t seem to give two shits about her stupid brother. When I went to lunge Peebs he kept looking back at the barn and was obviously distracted. I’m honestly surprised at how worked up Peebs was. I know in a week or so he’ll get over it and will be back to trying to bite her over the fence.