Whisper and the Blue Barrel

Never let it be said that a horse doesn’t know exactly what’s going on in and around his pasture. To adequately understand the logistics you have to visualize the layout. Whisper’s pasture is adjacent to the arena which is accessed by a ‘path’ that runs alongside his pasture. At the end of his pasture, on the outside of the rails are two blue drums, eight orange cones (stacked), and several cavalettis. There is also one blue drum on an overgrown trail course that Whisper can’t see from his pasture. Yesterday we had the pickup by the pastures so we decided to move the third barrel to join the others so we could use it in the. There are now three barrels at the end of Whisper’s pasture. While this was going on I had Whisper in the stable saddling him (more on that later). Thinking nothing of it I led Whisper down to the arena to continue his groundwork. We got to the end of the path and he came to a screeching halt and stood staring at the barrels. There was nothing else for it but to take him over to the barrels and introduce him to the third one. He snuffled at it, checked it over, and gave it his stamp of approval. Only then could we proceed to the arena.

Where another surprise waited.