Lots to show!

This weekend has been mostly dedicated to horses and I had my camera the entire time. What more need be said?

On Saturday I went out to the barn with Debbie and had almost the entire day to kill taking pictures. I also brought the telephoto lens my dad has. In short, during the first wave of riders in the ring, I had a field day taking pictures.
It's nice to be able to take close-ups of horses halfway across the ring.

Many of them came out blurry, unfortunately. I need some sort of staff to put the camera on so it doesn't move around so much--with a big lens, it's hard to hold still.

Here's a nice photo dump:

Expect a lot of these. There are so many pictures to share!

I, obviously, rode Jones. There are no pictures because we were doing a flat lesson (in which we focus mainly on eq., transitions, and core/leg strength--eg trotting without stirrups. Ouch.
We started with trotting without stirrups, progressed to trotting and doing "sit-rise-rise" and "sit-sit-rise" (each specific action taking place on a single beat of the trot) which wasn't too bad because I got to use stirrups. We then went on to sitting trot with and without stirrups, and finally to canter transitions which we did from both the trot and the walk.
It was a valuable lesson because my canter transitions have been getting... sloppy.
Now some pictures of Jones.

I also rode the barn's new lesson mare, Mandy. She's old-ish (her exact age is unknown since she was a rescue many years ago) and she's done just about everything from showing to having a baby.
She lives in the pasture with the other three lesson mares (Tigerlilly, Tilly, and Feliz) and seems to enjoy it. When I was taking her away from the others to go tack up, she would walk a step and then start trotting, leaning to the left. So I'd circle her around and we'd keep going. Either she's very tricky or she wants to get back to her new friends. Either way is viable.

The mare pasture is at the bottom of a hill and to get back up to the rest of civilization you have to go through a pasture of geldings. The group who goes out in the evenings is fine... but the group of geldings during the day... is hellish.
One of the geldings, named Lex, was in my opinion probably gelded late. He's always bothering the mares as they come up from their pasture and to my annoyance--Mandy was in heat. Why?? Why must mares refuse to go through menopause?
On the way through the gelding pasture she was still doing the circling thing so it wasn't exactly to my delight when Lex came galloping down the hill with his two cronies. Or when he started sniffing... you know... or when she started kicking out at him, etc. etc. It was all I could do to keep her either circling or moving a step forward while staying a good distance away and up by her shoulder. Finally someone came to head Lex off but it took another person to keep him away.
Lex:

After all the drama of getting her up the hill the ride was fairly uneventful. She's a bit strong and likes to stay as far on the rail as possible; nor does she really understand the idea of turning around a corner. But she's got a nice trot.
Getting her back down was better--Kim came with.

More pictures.

That concludes the post for today because it's so late. Just expect pictures of Rusty and Pepper tomorrow--along with pictures of my new Stablemate. I tell ya, minis are like potato chips. Can't have just one...