Fun day with Friends

 Today I did the cavaletti clinic with Lyric in the morning and then after we got home, I grabbed Dan and headed to Ashland to meet Sharon. 

 

We took a moment to look at my "outfits" for the show. She's so nice and offered to let me use either of her green breastcollars, but good golly.. I still haven't found a way to match my green saddle pad with the green breastcollar and a green shirt. Sigh... I can get two out of three, but not all three. But we did decide that the two turquoise outfits I had would be good options. One was the more teal and one was the more turquoise. So yay! 

 

Then Sharon loaned me one of her 1" thick pads to use as a liner for my wool blanket, since the 1/2" pad didn't work for him. And.. it worked great! So she sold it to me for $20. Sweet. And I put his turquoise and cream blanket on over it and we rode and he seemed quite happy. I also finally moved his homemade headstall over to the buckaroo bosal to test that out and he seemed quite happy in it. Although at the end of the ride I was pulling on the reins and pulled it halfway off his chin. Ha ha. I should have taken a photo... he was goofy looking. But yay for functioning tack again. 

 

Anyways... we got tacked up and Sharon went to lunge because Baylor had a bunch of time off since he bucked her off. Good thing she did because he was rowdy!! So I took the opportunity to go ride in the arena real quick. We warmed up very briefly and then trotted a tiny bit. And then I ran through our WE test and then played with some canter. Just enough to test out the saddle pad and bosal and make sure we were in good working order. He felt good and happy and seemed content. And we had a nice run through of our test so yay. Then we saw that Sharon was back at the trailer putting her bridle on, so we headed back.

 

We had a nice walk to the lake and then the boys splashed forever. Then we walked down through raccoon loop, crossed the bridge, and went alongside to the big creek crossing and then back up. As we came back up raccoon loop, we saw three little boys heads bobbing along. No helmets, so I'm pretty sure they were just on foot. They scared the horses a tiny bit so they stool tall and stared before they were willing to carry on. By then the boys had taken off down the trail. So we carried on and ended up taking the same trail they had, but we never did see them again. But then I saw a phone on the ground! I yelled for them, but they didn't respond, so i got off and picked it up. Luckily there was a fallen tree I could use to hop back up on. We hacked back and untacked and then Lucy came and got the phone. Good! I didn't know what to do with it and it was locked so I couldn't even call a number on it to tell them to let the person know. I suspect it was the kids that live near there and technically they were probably trespassing. But... oh well. Hopefully they won't get into too much trouble. At least they'll get their phone back. Assuming Lucy can figure out who it is. 

  

It was a fun ride and relaxing. 

Finally another ride

 Dan lost a shoe after our last ride but luckily Patrick came two days later and got it back on. I never did find it though. Or Lyrics missing shoe, but at least hers was at Ashland. I looked for Dan's for three days and never found it. But we got to ride today because it's back on!

 

I rode Funny first and when we finished it was rumbling almost non-stop. The skies were a little dark so I sat for a few and had a popsicle. But then.... nothing happened. And nothing kept happening. So I checked the radar and it showed a big bad storm in a little less than an hour. But, I decided to go for it. I was hoping that we could do a quick ride and beat the storm vs wait it out and then maybe lose my momentum and not ride. So I said a quick prayer and went to get Dan.

 

We tacked up super speedily and headed to the arena. We did a tiny bit of walking but then picked up the trot pretty quickly since he had been in the field and I didn't want to get rained out before we did anything. But we lucked out. It barely sprinkled a tiny bit and we were able to get in a full ride. In fact, it didn't end up doing anything so we could have ridden as long as we wanted. Which, we kind of did. 

 

We had a decent ride. He felt a little bit wobbly/weak in his hind end and didn't want to load that right hind. But he was a good boy and we had a decent ride. We did some trotting and cantering in general and then we played with the obstacles too. He wasn't as good as he was the other day, but he was still quite good. His canter was good too. And he didn't fall out of it at all, so yay. 

 

 

He's BACK!

 As much as he can be. :) 

   

Today was Dan's day to go to Ashland. He got in big trouble though before we even got there. He stalled on the way to the trailer but at least he peed pretty quickly when he stopped and didn't stop multiple times. But when I went to put the trailer camera up, he smacked me with his mouth in the shoulder. Dude.. that hurts!! I know he didn't bite me... but still.. watch your giant head and quit slinging it at me! I yelled at him and then told him to stop being such a butt! Grrrr. 

   

But then by the time we got to Ashland we had both forgotten and he was decent for being tacked up. It helped that we were chatting to Amanda who was there, so I was distracted and didn't pay too much attention to his snarky faces. If there were any. :) 

   

We headed out and had a great time. He still feels a bit weak/wobbly/sticky in his hind end at the walk. But he was game and walking forward, abeit not as fast as he used to. We trotted a good bit and he feels perfectly fine when he trots. And then, because I wanted to get some cantering in, we cantered. And then we cantered some more. So, we had a lovely hack all through Ashland, aiming for some hills, and we trotted and cantered and walked. I kept the canter bits short and pulled him up as soon as he gave an inclination of wanting to pull up or starting to think about faltering. And his hind end behaved! He even got a little wild hair in one of the fields and took off with me! Not a full out gallop but fast enough that it was a tiny bit intimidating in the bosal! Especially because he put his head down and contemplated bucking. Once I got over the "shock" of it and the split second of "please don't hurt yourself or trip" I relaxed and we had fun and then I was able to pull him up. Glad you've still got it in you sir!

 

  

We went to the lake and splashed but I told him NO SWIMMING. Not with the saddle. And then we walked back. Well, we trotted a tiny bit to make sure he wasn't sore from the gallop, but he wasn't. 

  

Good pony! You've redeemed yourself from earlier. And you're so cute!