What's up Wednesday

 

Happy to report we all survived the miserable cold Friday and Saturday. Obviously with the help of a few of my favorite winter items. Namely:

My last pair of Tredstep winter boots:

And the winter liner for my Samshield that I forgot I bought like four years ago:

Not sure why OneK hasn't made one of these yet... get on that OneK!

I rode Friday because the ring was still in the low 20's. But Saturday was a hand walk day for everyone. 

Granted this was overnight, but it wasn't much
warmer come morning.

In true New England fashion it was back in the forties by Sunday afternoon. No complaints from me. I'm just glad that was a quick cold snap.

Enough about the weather. Let's talk about horses!

Al was kind of a psycho all week. I don't want him free lunging right now as he seems to regularly hurt himself doing that. So for the sake of both of our safety, I rode him last week with a little help from modern science. But this week, I decided to let him have a little fun time on a lunge line. That way, I had some control over his shenanigans, but he could still have the opportunity to let out a buck or two. Which, he's not really a bucker. He likes to throw one now and then in turnout (or free lunging) but he's more of a tuck and scoot kind of guy. Either way, he got to do what he needed to calm the eff down, and I was able to keep it under control and minimize his chance of damage. It was a total success. I lunged him without tack, so he had some time to reset while I tacked him up to ride. And he was a little angel for our ride Tuesday (free of all pharmaceuticals). Of course today he was a bit more lively to ride as I don't want to lunge him every day. (Don't need him getting monster fit, ya know?) It was a very windy day here so I don't blame him for being a bit more alert today. He hates wind. Tentative plan for him is our first jump lesson on Friday. We're going to do a private, so I can be a chicken without wasting anyone else's time. I think it's a solid plan. We shall see how it plays out.

Eros is a perfect angel as always... Though I did nearly fall off twice in our flat lesson yesterday... You might be wondering how that could be possible being it's a flat lesson and Eros is generally a perfect specimen. So let me explain. We were allowing our horses to have a little hand gallop with a light seat. E was all "YEAH ZOOMIES!" And it was super fun. Until one of the sponsor banners on the wall came untacked in one corner and flew up right in front of us! Like a dragon opening wide to swallow us whole. Clearly, E had to do something to save us. So he crouched down like a cutting horse and did some moves. Like some real moves. I may or may not have said a few bad words. Well one bad word. Several times. But then nobody died and I stayed in the saddle and all was okay. (THANK GOODNESS THAT HAPPENED TO E AND NOT TO AL THOUGH!) Anyway, we went back to work and our instructor reattached the banner to the wall to save us from any future dangers. All was going well. We started doing a line of three flower boxes. They were set for three strides in between and we had to do three and three, then four and four, then four to three. Etc. It was going well to the left, which is the easier direction for us. Then we changed direction and tried it to the right. The first three was easy, and the second one looked like it was coming up nicely as well. One, two... And then he stared down at the flower box and came to a complete halt. One of the flowers was bent and kind of spilling out of the box, and apparently he didn't know what to make of that. It was quite abrupt, and yet also pretty hilarious. He wasn't dirty about it really and I stayed in the saddle pretty easily. But man. My back took a beating in this lesson! I wish it was on video because both incidents were likely very entertaining from a bystanders viewpoint. We came back around and had no other issues. I think something just looked really strange to him. He's allowed once in awhile to make a mistake. We all know he handles my mistakes on the regular. Plus, he did save me from the wall dragon earlier. 

As for Shiny... I mentioned last week that she tripped down to her face on Wednesday and I was going to see how she was for our lesson. She hasn't been quite herself since then unfortunately. She's not lame, but I think we're overdue for the neck to be injected. It's been about a year since we did it last. We did do the lesson Thursday, but I just did the flat portion and the warm up over rails part. This week she's really struggling any time I ask her to collect the trot. She does this odd shuffly gate that may be pacing? May be a tolt? I'm not sure what it is exactly, but it's not a trot. That I'm sure of. I'll keep her in work, but I'm not going to make her come round if she doesn't want to. She'll get on the list for the next vet visit, and our body worker is due to come next week too. So that might be able to fix whatever's bugging her. She might have just kind of jammed herself somewhere when she tripped. I know we'll get her patched up, just not sure exactly when. Not panicking though, overall she's definitely okay. 

And now you're all caught up! Hope you all survived the cold snap if you live where it hit (which is nearly everywhere I think). I know some of you had quite a rough week/weekend, and I'm thinking of you guys.