Snuck it in!!!

 Thank you God for hearing my prayers and showing me you love me by letting me get my horse fix in. :) 

 

After this week of not riding and my rides I got not going great, I just desperately wanted to ride! And was looking forward to today. A day to ride! But then on Friday the forecast changed to show rain ALL DAY today. Like... all day. And storms. Potentially hail and lightning. Ugh. On Friday I worked in the mountains, which was glorious! And in theory I made it home with enough time to sneak a ride in but Mike's friends were visiting, so... I was good and fed ponies and then went to dinner with Mike and them. Sigh. And then Saturday was a day with them. I sort of hoped I could sneak a ride in but wasn't sure. And of course they opted to go to the racetrack. The car racetrack. Soooooo not my idea of fun. Loud, fumes, and... watching cars drive in circles. Yeah... so not my idea of a good time. And Mike sort of hinted that maybe I didn't have to go. BUT... I dug in and went. I was a good wife. Especially since Mike had spent the whole day cleaning the house and was irritated. And, I'm actually glad I went. It was kind of fun. Sure, not as fun as something horsey, but... for a non-horsey thing, it was kind of fun. Once I got earplugs, cause holy moly was that loud! But it was kind of neat. Then we stopped for ice cream on the way home. I was itching to get home too. Ha ha. Oh well. We finally did and it was like 5 pm and since we had just gotten ice cream..... we weren't ready for dinner. So I asked if I could go ride and Mike said I could. YAY!!!!

 

I grabbed Danny and man was he dirty! Covered in red clay. But yay.. because for a day or two he had stayed so clean I thought he may be too sore to roll or something. He just never stays clean. So phew! We tacked up and headed up to the arena on foot. I made him do his psoas stretch and then we did a lap of pillars. Then we backed up a little. Then I got on. Oh, but I did put his right hind bell boot on for proprioception. 

 

He started out a bit bracey. Partly because he was sluggish and I was trying to not nag him but consequentially I had to bop him a few times so he would hollow every time I bopped him. But within 10 minutes he was relaxing and reaching for the bit and carrying himself without me nagging. Yay! We did our homework and then we trotted and did our homework trotting. He actually felt pretty good! He was nice and forward and felt pretty swingy. Whoo hooo! So then we cantered. And it was better already. The left lead felt a bit worse but not bad at all and the right lead felt better from the start. I made sure that my body was moving and my hips weren't locking up or blocking him. And he felt a bit stuck in his ribcage or lower back, so I made sure that he was yielding his barrel and changed my position a little to give his right hind room to go somewhere and it got better! We also went back to the trot and did some shoulder fore and haunches in to help. And then I tried Cindy's trick of trotting with one foot in the stirrup and one foot out of the stirrup. I made it the short side and half of the long side, then switched legs and made it about that same distance. Then I did half a long side of no stirrups. Dang that's hard. Then we went back to the canter and it was almost normal! Yay! Still weak and he still can't hold it long. I really feel like I need to start asking for more than 3 minutes of canter per ride, but it's hard to do. I don't want to overdo it. But baby steps. 

 

So then we did a bit more trotting and at this point, Mike and his friends were flying the drone. And it was high up but Dan was starting to notice it so... we were losing our softness, so I called it quits. We really didn't need to accomplish anything else anyways. Because... ahhhhhh, I felt so much better!

 

So now.. it's okay if it does rain ALL day. Maybe I can get them adjusted and acupunctured?? Or maybe they'll just be soaking wet all day and I can sit on the couch and get some work done on his book!