Soaked!!!

Was supposed to have the day off.... yet again was too nice and put people in... which meant my only window to ride was when major storms were supposed to hit. But.. it was 3:45 when I got home and the storms weren't supposed to hit til 5:15 so I made a mad dash for it.

Got to Ashland and put my boots on, my helmet on, and brushed Dan's saddle spot.... put his pad on. And it started raining... heavily. But it was a little passing shower so we ran back in the trailer for 3 minutes. Then it stopped so I tossed on tack and away we went. He was actually super good and felt great. We got about 15 minutes into the ride and it started raining... fairly heavily.... and then much heavier. But... at that point my new saddle was already wet (sobs!) and so I just kept going. It stopped in about 8 minutes so we carried on. Finally I looked and saw the dark clouds were now really dark and we started to hear some thunder rumbles so.... we did a quick trot to the XC field to look and cool down.... and then saw the clouds and some lightning so we ended up trotting back to the trailer.. i tossed his tack in the car, tossed him in the trailer and we high tailed it out of there. By the time we were untacking, the wind was whipping and howling. By the time we pulled out of ashland my wipers were on high speed!

But.. he was good and we had some AMAZING counter canter serpentines... and we nailed almost all of canter transitions.... the correct lead AND not too inverted. We did miss one from the walk but it was totally my fault and I felt myself fall out of place.

And we figured out the leg yield from the rail thanks to a trick Kelli gave me. Not sure it's what she meant by it, and not sure it's actually a smart thing to do, but it seemed to work...

On the short side ride shoulder fore... then as we make the turn in the corner, haunches to the rail (Renvers.. travers.. i have no idea), which.. is counter-intuitive, but I think it puts him in the right rein (the new outside rein) so then I can close my leg and push him into the right leg yield. And then we have a fairly nice leg yield, and believe it or not.. no haunches trailing. :) Of course I also had to get him a little hot to my leg aids first, but... still :)

So... at least I got to ride...