Riding Horses

This was a while ago, but I've just now gotten to blogging it.
We are so fortunate as to have a professional equestrian in the family. My sister Rachel trains horses in dressage and teaches lessons, as well as competing with her own horses and other peoples'. It's a whole thing.  
Though Jonas has grown up with her horses around and available, he's still not very comfortable with them. Lavinia, on the other hand, doesn't have any fear or common sense (such as, you don't walk under the horse!)




This is HotRod Lincoln.  Isn't his headband pretty?  We're having our lessons on HotRod.  He's sweet as pie.  We love him to death!  He loves us back, too.  



Here Lavi eagerly awaits her turn.  "It's not fair!" She insists, which is just silly because it will be perfectly fair when her brother has finished and he has to wait around in boredom.  Plus, we're unschoolers, and "fair" isn't what life is about.  She'll catch on eventually.
 


This is Jonas look really unenthused about his lesson / pony ride.  What's his deal?



Ringo on the other hand, is thrilled to have a ride.  Well, no, not really, he probably felt the same way as Jonas, but he knew better than to hop off.  Believe it or not, Ringo actually spends most of his days running with the big dogs at the barn.  He's quite horse savvy.



Jonas is much happier to be on the ground. He flat out refused to touch the horse at all, but he got really excited about the ride, after a while. He seemed to feel better once he figured out how to "control" the horse a little. I think with time he could really like this. I'm sure that the actual riding is very therapeutic for him. He was all mellow afterward.



Finally she gets the much anticipated turn!  She was a nervous at first, but she lost all fear pretty quickly.



Look at this big girl!  She's so grown up and proud of herself!




She gave HotRod a much appreciated hug and kiss after her ride.  




Here's Rachel getting HotRod ready to go back in his stall.  This part was dreadfully dull, until they got to give HotRod (and friends!) peppermint candies, carrots, apples, and hay!  Though Lavi got carried away with this, it was pretty interesting for them to communicate with the horses.  They could tell right away which horses wanted hay, and which ones were disappointed that it wasn't another apple.