Working class ponies.

I leave it to you to decide whether I mean working class ponies or working class ponies. But Obama is definitely a class pony, and is clearly working so, its simple. I mean working class ponies.

Today he was pulling larch poles out at Windy Cross, working over a carpet of brash, on uneven ground with random stumps as an extra hazard. You can see him crossing his front feet as he tries to get the angle right to pull the stick out.
But this isn't done on some carefully raked dressage arena, and more to the point, I haven't a clue what is going on. We are learning together. And the next stick will be different, different angle, different footing, it may be light and easy, it could be a right pig.

You can see Obama giving it some extra grunt as this stick is nicely wedged between a couple of others, and he can't get a straight pull because an oak sapling we are trying to save is in the way. The next shot shows the stick at the bottom of the hill.

Quite a stick.

Obama now knows that once he gets the stick moving, its going down to the pile, so he sets off and when he gets there, he stops where he stopped last time and waits for me to detach the stick from the rig.
If necessary he takes a step forward to give me room to work, otherwise waits till I am ready, I turn him and we head back to the next one.
I never taught him, I didn't have the time or the skill, I just started doing the job and he picked it up as we went along.
He prefers me to clear a track, but he'll work over brash, logs, pretty much anything. This is his third day at Windy Cross and he's looking pretty cool,  as you can see if you watch the slide show below.

< As you can see, the sequence of commands is random at best,but Obama gets the job done. This is not down to brilliant training, not even on Obama's part. Man, working man, has worked with and beside ponies for millennia. If you work beside someone, you really get to know them, and you learn to work as a team. Obama is really easy to work with, most ponies are. Dartmoor farmers, Fell farmers, Dales farmers, Welsh farmers didn't keep ponies for thousands of years in the hope that one day, small girls with rich parents would find a use for them at Gymkhanas and Pony Club Camp. They have been the backbone of the economy for a lot longer than there has been a Chancellor of the Exchequer, which I will admit isn't even 700 years. Parvenus the lot of them.