Today was SOOOO much fun! I wanted to do something fun since it actually was supposed to be dry again. But I didn't know what I wanted to do. Danielle had mentioned she and Rusty might go to Hitchcock Woods and I was sort of already considering it. However, last night I was feeling like I was getting the flu or a cold and wasn't sure I wanted to drive 5 hours to trail ride. And even this morning, I woke up at 9 and sat around in bed til about 9:45... got up, fed ponies, came in and ate cereal... and then was like... You know, I think I DO want to go ride at Hitchcock. Unfortunately that meant leaving around 11 and not getting there til 2, which meant a late day coming home. But Mike was okay with it so... off we went. I also got beet pulp while I was there, which I was needing anyways, so win!
We had an awesome time. Rusty and Danny are well matched! Dan's one of the few that could keep up with Rusty and Rusty is one of the few that can keep up with Dan. :) Seriously, in the beginning Danny was outwalking Rusty but by the end, Rusty was outwalking Dan. They trotted happily together side be side and were good sports. We did about an hour of walking with some trotting, which is harder work in the sand! Then we hit the circle of fences and decided to jump. We debated going one at a time, but I said "I'm betting they'll be fine together". HA! I had actually talked earlier to Danielle about how I thought that Dan wasn't as competitive as Fleck and I was thinking of maybe trying to take him fox hunting. So.. we started off and Dan was off like a jack rabbit! I don't know what I was thinking... other than I was trying to tack up quick cause Danielle was ready before me, but I had only put on his dressage bridle with the nathe, so..... I didn't have any brakes! So... we basically steeplechased all the fences. Sometimes I was able to keep Dan behind Rusty and sometimes I wasn't. Mostly I wasn't. And we had about 3 separate runs... By the third run either Danielle got smart and wrangled Rusty much better or Danny just really was ignoring me but she was behind us and Dan was going. hee hee. I tried to turn Dan to slow him down and almost got run over by them. I didn't realize that they were that close behind us. Ooops. We then managed to jump a jump in almost perfect unison and they were both awesome! So then Danielle wanted to quit on that jump and pulled Rusty up and I was able to get Dan slowed down to a proper BN/Nov canter over one more final jump and then I quit too. Hee hee. I guess with Rusty being a 1 star horse and Dan being... Dan... they made a good match. We laughed and said that it was probably not the best "training" for either horse, and how it was a super good thing we weren't running XC at a show the next weekend.... but it was soooo much fun! And I think both boys enjoyed it. And actually... even though the fences are a bit hard to read, Dan got the hang of them. The first few he sort of tripped over, got too deep, or ran past his distance, but then we got some fairly nice fences. I think because I was trying to hard to half halt with the nathe, and because he was able to go into the bit, I was able to sit deep and get my leg in front of me and get his withers up and we had some pretty nice fences! :) So... we'll just say it was good training after all. :)
So then when we got home, Dan got iced... and I figured I'd throw the ice boots on his back legs (Although.. those things suck.. they barely got his legs cold in a few spots.... I need to go back to my ice gel cells or something for the hinds)... and he got the Bemer put on and the bemer cuff on both hocks... ha ha.. Spoiled much!!!??
SUCH A FUN DAY!!! Now for another two days of non-stop rain supposedly.
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