Winter Days with Woody

The past couple of days have been cold, but not as cold as they have been. So, I went out with Woody to play and to hopefully saddle him up and do some long distance point to point across the pasture, to get him engaged and motivated. I went out, we played a bit, then I got the saddle and pad and began to try to saddle him. However, once I put the saddle on, he got really worried about something outside the fence and began to trot around. I took the saddle and pad off of him and gave him something to do: falling leaf patterns. We did those down to the round pen and rested, then did them back toward the barn where we were saddling up, and he eventually got to his threshold of the "scary monster" outside the fence, so we turned around (retreated) and came back to it, until he was able to cross it confidently. We got the saddle, the 22 foot line, and some cookies, and went out more toward the round pen, where Charlotte was. We played around with a log and eventually I tried to saddle him again, with success! He practically went to sleep while I saddled him, but I kept an eye on him and his posture to make sure he wasn't going introverted... he was fine.
We played around a bit more and took some pictures of us together, then I let him go and threw hay.
We have a new gate thing that we can attach to the fence and the inside fence (the inside of the pasture paradise), which causes them to run around the pasture to get to the hay on the other side. They always race though, and its so fun to watch because they will buck in each others faces and they can really book it!
~Eden