Practicing

Today was a HOT hot hot miserable day! Freddie came in the morning and it was hot then! Then I had to spread manure. Then it was time to ride. I was so torn. Part of me wanted to ride at Ashland because the footing is better... and then we could hack. But then part of me wanted to ride at home. But it meant moving jumps and setting up the arena. Although at Ashland, they only had the small arena open. Argh. I finally decided that it was way too hot to move all the jumps and the footing at home looked rather damp. And I figured if I didn't go ride now... I might lose my motivation and it was unlikely to get cooler later.. or not cool enough. Which, side note, good thing I didn't wait... it got WAY HOTTER AND MORE HUMID later in the day. Like... suffocatingly bad. So anyways... I finally decided to go to Ashland. And it was definitely the better choice. Plus, the small arena had been opened up to the big one :) YAY!

So we rode. We warmed up and then after a little bit of work on the canter and the half pass and the canter transitions... we ran through our tests. And holy heck... 2-2 is a really hard test. Like really hard!!! 

Practiced dressage... ran through 2-2 and 3-1. 2-2 is WAY HARDER!!! WAY HARDER! Like why did I decide to ride this test?! The trot tour isn't too bad, but then the canter is hard stuff. The simples are hard. The counter canter on the rail off a diagonal is hard. It's just a hard test! And I believe it's the one with the centerline at the end that has the medium to working to halt. Which is also hard. It's Dan's favorite!!! But hard to get him back to working. Although he did it pretty well today. So then we ran through 3-1. And wow... that's really an easy test. I mean... I'm sure it's not easy in the sense that we're not in enough of a 3rd level collection/sit... and we obviously still don't have our changes. But... it flows nicely and rides quite well. It sort of sets you up for success. :) But I made the mistake of just seeing if I could get a change. Nope! I have no idea how to ask. So then we went back to our simples. And he got a little rushy. But oh well. The goal for tomorrow is NOT to win... NOT to get a good score... but more using it as a ride a test to see how far off we are. Which, I suspect, is quite far. I have a feeling that I'm going to be highly disappointed. The last few rides he's felt amazing and I've been like "yeah... we're gonna score in the 60's even without a change!", but.... I'm guessing not. I'm guessing in real life... it's not as fancy as it feels. But oh well. I think he's a rockstar and I told him so, so... that's what we're going with. 

When we were done we walked out and dang.... when we stop creating our own wind it's HOT!!! Dan was puffing and even a little worn out. I was puffing and worn out. We went back to the trailer and got naked. :) Hee heee. Well, Dan got a bareback pad and the hack halter. I got my shoes and socks off. We headed to the lake. BUT... of course... because there were no friends, Dan decided he was bored and didn't want to bother playing. So he put his front two feet barely in, took a sip or two, and headed back. Seriously dude?! But when we're fully tacked.. that's when you want to swim? Sigh... Oh well. We headed back and took the long route and then he got a nice rinse off and was cool at that point.