Well... I woke up early this morning to try to sneak in a ride before work, but... woke up not feeling great and when I went outside it was misting and looking rough. So... I bailed. I was just so tired. But of course, despite laying in bed for another hour longer... I couldn't sleep. I was in the exhausted state where I swear I was asleep, but I wasn't. Sigh. Oh well. And it never did any thing else weather wise. Sigh. So then I went to work and did 3 horses and then my last one cancelled. Well, they had someone at their barn test positive for Covid, so she offered to let me bail. I bailed. But that meant I had enough time to ride! So the weather was looking kind of sketchy, but.. it seemed like it was going the other way so.. off we went. :)
We started off with a nice relaxing ride. It was hot and steamy, but... kind of a nice breeze. I was distracted because my phone kept going off so I finally gave up and was replying to some messages. We were in the big hay field behind the lake and I was texting and suddenly we were spinning hard and I almost came off! I almost flung my phone. I did lose my crop. Doh! Dan stopped luckily and then I saw the deer bounding off. She was bedded down in the tall grass and when she jumped up... she scared the tar out of Dan. He settled quickly though. I tried to get him to grab my crop, but the grass was too tempting. So.. I had to hop off and get it. Luckily there were logs stacked up nearby so I could get back on. We continued on our merrily way until the very end. We were coming up past the small lake and Dan started snorting and threatening to spin and bolt staring at the boathouse. ??? What?! I don't see anything.... Still don't see anything... I guess Dan must have been spooking at the cinder block?? So I managed to get him past it, but he did it by cantering up the short hill, and ducking hard left... almost scraping me off him with the branches. Goober!
Then we were fine. :)
Well.... Dan and I went for another walk. We were good and only spent 30 minutes out there. But... when we tried to turn around half way through... Dan didn't want to. He kept trying to turn back around and keep going. Me too, buddy... me too. But... we have to make good life chioces and behave so that we can get back to playing. So we turned around and came home. 
But...thinking about it, I had to praise God. I mean... if I'm going to have to rehab my horse... and we can only do short walks for a few months... what better time than now. Looking back, it all kind of fell into place. Covid hit... which meant I took the month off, which meant I was finally able to ride multiple rides in a row repeatedly and figured out that Dan was in fact, broken. Then I had to wait for the vet appointment so I was able to work on the house. And because of Covid, no one else was showing anyways either. Then we had the vet appointment and were told to wait longer. And then my house sold. And now I'm dealing with a ton of stress trying to pack the house up, find a new farm to move to, and work. So if I was trying to ride on top of that... especially if I was trying to show, or get ready for AEC's... that would be too much. Way too much. So, I'm very grateful to God for that. And I'm very grateful that Dan is allowed to trail walk, because... I need that. Oh do I need that! It is my stress reliever...
