Riding weather

I had hoped to have pictures of finished, shiny horses up by now. That got derailed by some mold-making problems - caused by a really foolish mistake on my part - that I'll post about later. It made what should have been a simple task take most of this past week.

So I was really looking forward to Wednesday, which is "barn day" for me. The weather report was predicting temperatures in the 70s, and sure enough it was a lovely warm day. It was such a nice change from weeks of cold, wet rides. As you can see in the picture, Sprinkles is still quite woolly.



And she has Welsh Cob feet! But just on the front. For some reason her hind feet didn't get much feathering this winter. The folks at the barn were wondering why I was on the ground taking shots of her feet, but I loved how the hair swirled off to the outside on each leg. (They really wondered when I laid on the gravel under her to get some belly shots of the hair growth patterns.)

I also finally got some pictures of "Prince", one of the lesson horses there that has really unusual Bend Or spotting. His color reminds me a bit of the Thoroughbred stallion GPS Krugerrand, only with charcoal spots rather than chestnut.



Our red clay has stained his mane and tail and he's pretty dirty, but those dark grey spots are his coloring, not stains. Under the dirt he's a really pale isabella palomino, so those spots really stand out when he's clean. I realized after I got home that I took pictures of the wrong side, though. He has even more spots on the other side.



And aside from his odd markings, Prince is one of my favorites because he's got such a sweet disposition and big Maureen Love-style eyes!

Spending a warm afternoon with the horses was just the thing I needed to get charged back up about finishing up my wayward casting project and getting back to painting and sculpting.