Family walks

We had a family walk the other night.  My honey and my sweet baby accompanied me as I led Griffin on a walk through the woods.  Once again, Griffin was fabulous!  He's so calm and level-headed.  He is now getting so comfortable with me that he's starting to be bit pushy about treats and apples, so we'll start working on that now.  How I deal with that mainly is offer less treats and make him have to earn them more.  I'll back him up and when I get a nice respectful backup, he'll get a treat, but not if he's lipping at my hands when I don't even have a treat for him.  I'd rather him be this comfortable in the beginning.  I can fix the lippiness pretty quick now.  We walked through the woods and ended up at my parent's house to chat.

I like to wear my helmet when I'm taking young horses for their first walks...you never know when/how they might spook and sometimes when they whirl, your head can be in the path of their head (and they have such hard heads!).  I like to have a little protection...plus if they get too close to my head, I can just bonk them with my helmet and it makes them back off and give me a little space...they think my head is really hard then!

I love this picture of me leading him, but the color was pretty dull because it was so cloudy so I edited it.  I kinda like the "sepia" look.

He had a lot of fun standing under my parent's apple trees and eating apples.

My mom's chickens look so happy and busy foraging under the apples trees.  Right after I took this picture, we were all just standing around chatting when my parent's dog and my dog got in a fight...right next to Griffin.  Griffin was startled, but not bothered.  After his initial startle (threw his head up - he'd been grazing), he just stood and watched them as they worked it out.  It was a brief fight.  He really does have a nice temperament.  I think he'll be bold and secure like Chico, but not quite as forward...Griffin seems a little stickier with moving than Chico.

And Griffin also has that typical gelding behavior...you know, where there is so much going on in their heads and the only outlet is to get into everything and be a pest?  He is the horse that sticks his front leg in the water trough and gets it all muddy.  He also tries to graze under the panels, even though he could walk out to the pasture and find nice grass there

And of course, he has to stomp and squash the rubber tubs that I occasionally feed them grain in (they get grain very rarely). 

I guess maybe he's trying to tell me something?