Oh how we both needed this today! My brain has been playing tricks on me and making me upset and angry for no reason. So today... I'm so grateful for today. For the alone time.. the beauty... the talk with God... and Dan. The comeback kid. Another great ride. Another gallop. Another few cross country jumps. I'm so grateful that God has been gracious and let me continue to do the fun things with him. '
And today was supposed to be different. But this was better! We were supposed to be doing the rider biomechanics clinic. I had signed up to ride both Dan and Lyric. And I was really looking forward to it. I got up at 6:45 to get ready and there was a text saying that Jessica (the clinician) was sick and we were cancelling. Honestly... not too upset as I was so tired for the last two weeks. So I went back to bed! After sleeping in a tiny bit I got up and fed horses and then went back to bed again for a bit more. Then I got up and going and Dan and I decided to head to Ashland. They had the jumper show going on. I decided that we needed a long hack. And maybe a gallop. And Kelli was going to join us but didn't want to get moving that quickly so she was aiming for later in the day. I figured maybe we would do our fitness work and then meet her in the arena for a little bit of dressage and then maybe we could do a cool down hack together. She ended up going back to bed too and actually slept so we didn't get to meet up with her. But that's okay. It worked out beautifully.
Dan and I said hi to some friends at the show and then headed out for the woods. We did a nice long walk warm up and then did some trotting and some cantering. He felt good. Although he swapped a few times in the canter. He still (and always has) preferred his left lead for speed. We went to the big hay fields and tried to do some more cantering and galloping there. But it was so humid and he was being a bit of a lazy bum so we mostly cantered and then walked and trotted a little. We did head to the other side of the lake and jumped the little log out in the path. As we landed and took the first stride we saw a big rat snake in our path! ACK! Jump him Dan! Danny didn't really jump him but luckily he cantered over him without stepping on him. I pulled him up and we circled back to make sure that we didn't squish him. Luckily he was unharmed and luckily Dan didn't seem to mind the snake almost underneath him. Ha ha. Good boy! So then we carried on and hit the woods as it was getting steamier. We did some more trotting on the good footing areas and then I let him pick the path home. He picked the steep hill. Yay for hill work! (He's been losing his stifle a few times... which I'm not sure if it's actually not a good sign.. that maybe his stifle is functioning normally now and we're just weak as we've certainly been doing more dressage and less fitness work lately).
We ended up in the XC field. Which wasn't a bad thing as I was sort of hoping to pop him over a few fences. There were two riders trying to get their horses into the water complex so we trotted up to offer assistance if they wanted it. They got their horses in right as we approached but Dan wanted in so.. in we went. They mentioned they were young so I asked if they minded if we popped over a few fences and they said they didn't care. So once I got Dan out of the water we headed over to the ditches to find some jumps to jump. Two deer came running out.. or a weird goofy deer that looked... almost like a cartoon (it was so weird!) and then a whitish thing that I didn't quite see but kind of saw and Dan apparently kind of saw. And that whitish thing freaked him out so we spent a few minutes staring into the spot it disappeared into awaiting it's return. I finally got him to unfocus and come back to me and we opted to jump the coffin. It was a fairly large coop to the ditch to the hanging log. And the coop wasn't that large but considering we haven't jumped much in over a year.. it was rather big. But Dan just popped over it and then skipped over the ditch and was game for the hanging log. We then cantered past the water at a very rapid pace! Um... sir.. you were lazy earlier when I wanted you to gallop.. now you are trying to bolt near two young horses. Rude sir, rude! Luckily the girls horses were just watching and not riled up. I managed to get him somewhat subdued and we headed up the second smallest bank and then jumped the log stack. He jumped that gamely out of stride and then we galloped full out almost to the lake. There was two horses about to go into the lake as we came trotting up. Oh man.. my timing sucks today! I asked if they were going in and minded company and they said no, even when I said Dan would probably cannonball in. So we did! He was so splashy but so happy to have friends at the pool! Although at one point the chestnut gelding lunged at us for getting too close to his paint friend. hee hee. Whoops! Sorry! But they all went back to splashing. At one point Dan managed to send a huge splash right into my face! Everything was soaked! But it was fun! Then Dan decided he was done and just left. I told the girls bye and thanked them for letting me crash their pool party and apologized that Dan was just doing whatever Dan wanted without any regard for others.
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