Oranges Beware...!!!

Oranges are not safe in the barn when Chester is in it.  After our ride this afternoon - in which he has felt the best yet - I stuck him in his stall for a couple minutes so he could relax, have a drink and pee!!  I left his stall door open and in following what is clearly horsemanship 101 just tied his lead rope across the door as a stall guard.  I turned my back to grab my tack and as I was walking back towards him, he had stretched out as far as he could and had grabbed my orange that I had left on his blanket rack!!! Great - damn horse, ruin my perfectly good orange.  He is unbelievably picky when it comes to food and won't touch a banana with a 10 foot poll.  So, you could imagine my surprise when he ate the thing. Whole. Or, so I thought.  As I watched him in disbelief, he stood there happily slurping down the orange and making a big slushy mess on the floor.  Then, just when I thought he had eaten the whole thing... he proceeds to spit out the entire peel...He had eaten the entire orange and peeled it, in his mouth, and decided he didn't want to eat the peel...(ha - I know of some places that would consider that 'trick' a luxury....if you get what I am saying.)  I had no idea he liked oranges.  I guess we could all benefit from a little more Vitamin C!!
He cantered today - on his own. I was up in 2 point going around and around and around the sandbox and just letting him move under me...and he just slipped up into canter on the left lead...not going to lie, it felt pretty good, not going to lie, I wanted to go on, but I stopped him pretty quickly from cantering and we continued on trotting and trotting and trotting...He keeps feeling better - which is great, but I think his right stifle is bothering him (lack of muscles, problem turning sharply to the right) and I will talk to DVME at some point this week about maybe blistering it again...poor guy...as it worked marvelously last year.  We are going to continue to do a lot of walking/stretching/bending this week and on the weekend, will start with some raised trot poles so he can pick his feet up and give him something to think about other then going around the outside of the arena for 40 minutes...I have apologized to him in advance for this, but I think he gets it.  We have to do this now so we can run and jump later...!!!
The gleam in his eye is back, his 'people' are making a big deal over him when he is in the cross ties and he is snorting to himself more. I haven't been happier in weeks!!
Let's Go Chester!!