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| Rory looks good in turquoise! |
These blankets are advertised as being adjustable up or down a full size from the listed size, so I bought one size too large for Rory's current size (he's 72" right now). He's at the age where he's still growing and could need the larger size before the end of winter. The ability to go up yet another size also opens up the possibility that he could wear the blankets again next year - assuming his buddies don't rip them apart. I wasn't willing to spend a lot of money on blankets that he quite probably wouldn't be able to wear another year so I went with a "cheap" brand. So far I'm quite pleased with the blankets.
I put the rainsheet on Rory when I got home, snugged it down as small as it would go and it fits him quite nicely. The top chest strap is a bit lower than I'd like, but that seems to be a common issue with smaller blanket sizes. The rainsheet is one of the ones that has a mesh lining behind the nylon shoulder area, and as I expected the mesh attempted to crawl off over Rory's tail as he ran about his field for a few minutes. Mesh can't move forwards against the hair so the blanket ends up jammed tight around the horse's shoulders, and the high neck styles have the high neck pulled back and rolled in - which funnels the rain neatly down inside the blanket. I took the blanket off, and took it home with me so I could spend a couple of hours sewing a nylon lining over the mesh area. Normally I wouldn't buy a mesh lined blanket, but this one was inexpensive enough that I was willing to do the work to cover it. We had a torrential rain overnight Tuesday and into Wednesday and Rory was nice and dry under the rainsheet when I brought him in on Wednesday.
Rory's still a little uncertain about the putting on and removal of the blanket, but he doesn't try to escape. Today I sort of squashed it together over his back and wiggled it around and made it rustle before actually taking it off. We worked a bit on the longeing concepts again today. Another horse was being longed at the other end of the arena and we occasionally had to stop and watch for a bit, especially when she started to canter. Rory was good. He's getting the "walk on" very well (same command as in hand), "out" is coming, and "whoa" isn't too bad either - depending on how distracted he is. Tightening the surcingle in the arena was a bit of a wigglefest, but I got it snugged up. He doesn't have sidereins or anything like that just yet, but I have him wearing boots, surcingle and bridle just so he grows accustomed to doing things with tack on. Many of the jumps have moved into the arena for the winter so the far corners are full of equipment. Rory was wary of them at first, but was fine once he had a chance to go and take a look - and stick his nose into the box of flowers.
Earlier this week we went for a walk around outside. Partway down the road, round the track. Rory half bolted a couple of times, but turned back to me when he felt the pressure on his halter without a lot of effort on my part. I was quite pleased with that given his baby tendency to just decide he's leaving. We're facing a longish walk down the road in the next couple of weeks. I'll pick a quiet time of day, but we're going to be working on the longeing and yielding to pressure on the halter leading up to the day.
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