What's Up Wednesday

 

Guy! GUYS! I sat on my horses yesterday! (And nobody died!) We couldn't do much because 1/3 of the ring is still frozen, 1/3 is too muddy, leaving only 1/3 to ride on. But I'll take what I can get. Also it was 70 degrees and I rode in short sleeves. It was glorious! 

Also short lived as winter returns tomorrow, but again, I'll take what I can get! I do think it's kind of nice for the horses to have a couple riding days and then a day or two off after having so much time off. Ease into things. Okay, now that the best part has been discussed, we can look back at the week. 

Good news, the furnace was fixed on Friday! (Even better that it hasn't had to come on the last couple of days.) Nice to have something checked off the get fixed list. 

We had some rain on Friday which helped to melt a significant amount of snow. That brought more mud of course, but definitely progress! Saturday I spent most of the day on cleanup outside. We've been keeping up with picking up manure outside everyday, but it's hard to get it all in the snow. Some falls down so deeply you can't see it. Sometimes it freezes solid to the ground before you get to it. That sort of thing. Since I turn out in the ring it's pretty important to get that out of the footing. It was a productive day. I thought I'd have a lot less to do on Sunday but with even more melting, it was just as busy. But it felt really nice to have it cleaned up. We don't have too much snow left at all, just unfortunately along the one side of the ring. But honestly, that's Al's dream because it's all along his danger zone. Not gonna lie, I appreciate the excuse to not ride over there the first few times in the saddle!

Monday was warm, in the 60's and I initially felt guilty not starting the horses that day. But there wasn't enough good footing yet and it was pretty windy. Which sounds like a cop out, but adding wind to a first ride in two months... Meh. It eased my guilt. And yesterday was so perfect! Definitely the better of the two days to start horses. 

I don't have a big enough space to lunge yet, so I just got right on. Well. Al had a handwalk first. But otherwise I just got on them. I kept them all to short rides 15-20 minutes. 90% walk. We trotted just the one long side a couple times each direction. Everyone felt good enough, but we have a lot of fitness work to do. And probably some vet maintenance stuff to, but they need a baseline fitness level before we get to any of that. 

I started with Eros. I figured he was a good first one because he might be a little spicy, but he'd be fine. I wanted one confident ride before I did Al. (Riding is such a head game isn't it?!) He was good! He was anxious about the end of the ring, but it's also pretty wet down there so we didn't quite go all the way back. (Fun fact, when he's turned out, he won't go all the way down there until after Shiny is in her paddock. She's his security blanket.) 

Al was surprisingly pretty good. As is the norm, as soon as I swung a leg over Al, Bang and Clang next door started his nonsense. First he wandered out to the shed in the back next to my ring and rifled around in there for awhile. Then he wandered back and forth along the tree line for no apparent reason. Then he dropped a bunch of milk crates because putting them down quietly would be too difficult... But despite all that (and two months of vacation) Al kept his poo together. He even offered a nice stretch for one of his long side trots! I was proud of him. I am confident that if I had asked for actual work we might not have had the same outcome. But I also think that would have been an unfair ask so he would be justified. 

Shiny was great of course. Her trots were... slow and silly, but that's who she is as a pony. It was enough trotting to get her past her shuffle phase. But that's fine. We're just getting started. I think she was happy to do something finally. 

We're going to do the same thing again today. It's cooler today but still really nice in the lower-mid 60's. I'll definitely take it this time of year! Tomorrow is one of those days that starts out in the 50's and then just gets colder and colder as the day goes on. It will be raining and then mixing to snow. So kind of a rude return to winter, but it's okay. No accumulation expected. I'll refrain from complaining about it! And then we'll see what the weather does if we get to do more riding after that or not. We'll just have to see how the footing is. Even if we have another break it won't be too long, and it was such a nice recharge to get a little time in the saddle. It should hold me over for a bit! 

That's it from here! Things are looking up!