This message is from: [EMAIL PROTECTED] What an interesting day!! We loaded up Joe and Della early this morning and drove a few hours south to visit with some friends. It's always a fun time - they raise chickens, and pigs, and fjords, but this time we went with a specific purpose: to harness up the ponies Joe has some fairly solid driving experience in his past, but my one attempt to drive him previously did not turn out too well. He became flustered and agitated and the trainer I was working with advised me to bail out (he was driving). Della Ree has never been harnessed before. I won't go into all the details, but I was simply amazed at these guys! Della was completely unfazed by anything (except the recently gelded stud who was extremely interested in her). The farm could be quite scarey to some horses - it is full of large pieces of equipment, lots of animals (including a LOUD large donkey), many other fjords, and just lots of new stuff). She got harnessed and ground driven like she had done it 100 times before. We hitched Della and Joe up together, and they were a bit awkward at first trying to figure out how to coordinate their bodies, but in less than 10 minutes, they were pulling mostly in sync and doing a terrific job. Della is a follower, and shorter than Joe, so she took some encouragement to keep pulling her share of the weight. And a couple of times Joe decided it was time to stop working so hard and took some convincing that we were not done. Gene let each of us take a few turns on the reins to get the feel (he has a set of second reins that allowed him to take control if we got off track), and we all had a wonderful time. Mostly, I am just amazed at how naturally Della took to driving, and how breathtakingly beautiful Joe is when he is working. Della worked up a heavy sweat and both ponies were tired, and quite relieved to rest in the trailer on the way home. Joe is probably a bit more than I would want to tackle driving alone, but for the first time ever I felt the draw of driving. I can hardly wait for my next lesson! Kate and Joe (who CAN pull, but just doesn't think he should) and Della (who seems to do everything with good will)
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