Winter Music

  Poor Lyric. My delicate little flower. We had planned to go to Charlie Elliott today and ride with Laura and Jacel. I told Lyric this morning that we were going for a fun trail ride and it would be relaxing and nice. LIES!!! All lies!! Doh. Poor girl.    We went to pick Laura and Smarty up because her husbands truck was in the shop so he took hers. Not a big deal.. she's only 15 minutes away from CE. We picked her up and headed out. Jacel and Monica were there so we all got tacked up. There was a couple parked next to us with western horses and when I unloaded Lyric he was like "Holy cow.. is she 18 hands? She's huge!!". Yes sir.. but not 18 hands. Ha ha. But her butt next to Smarty's butt was HUGE. Ha ha. I forgot to get a photo though of them in the trailer. We got tacked up and headed out.   For whatever reason, everyone was a little jazzed up when we started out and Smarty and Piper got in the front and then Lyric and Moose were both a little panicky about g...

  Ugh... we're so over this weather!! It's miserable!! It's so humid. Soooo soooo humid! And hot, but more so so humid. I was supposed to have 7 horses today and then a shockwave... but it turned into 3 horses and I forgot about the shochwave. Since it was so hot I decided to just leave it at the three and not add in extra patients and then maybe I could go home and ride! Ha! First... it was WAY too hot and humid after I finished with the three. And then, I had forgotten about the shockwave. And of course they were literally 5 minutes from each other... and she couldn't get off work and back in time.. So.. rather having scheduled the 3 for the end of the day and riding when it was (presumably) cooler, I was dumb. Oh well. At least she was only 20 minutes away, so I just came home and sat on the couch and ate lunch and cooled off and then went back out. When I did get home it had cooled off a tiny bit.. maybe.. kind of... sort of. Ha. But I wanted to ride dangit. So I di...

 photos: 8-26 canter work kinda stupid hot but had a late start to my day so figured i might as well try, since it wasn't quite so unbearable this morning... at least until I tacked up ;) But hey... she wasn't sweaty before we started at least. rode before breakfast even though not as early as I should have cause I slept in a bit. kept it short. a bit stiff and braced. lost her hind end a few times. worked on working to lengthen to working in trot and canter. helped. canter got better at the end and then got a nice trot. had a good stretchy trot too. quit on that and hacked home.

 so hot and steamy.. changed my mind once i got to ashland. was supposed to hack with sharon and jamie and jessica, but wanted to practice the dressage test. but then decided perhaps to jump XC with Jessica instead and practice dressage tomorrow or wed or fri. Needed to make sure we were ready to jump BN cross country.  fun ride. a little wired to start. then schooled. as long as i stay back she goes. but man, we lost steering and it's a bit squirrely! good girl though. galloped away with me up the hill, but... i let her. didn't ask, but allowed. ;)  then poor sharon got dumped.  good pony but hot pony.  photos: 8-26 trails and xc, videos

 8-26 so steamy hopped on because why not. it's miserable but i'm already soaked and sweaty and geared up and it's not actively raining, despite threatening with rumbles. poor lyric was already basically soaked in sweat. not dripping but mostly covered. tacked up and did a quick ride. much better right off the bat. quite decent really. canters much better though right lead today felt a bit earthbound. better when I stay 'behind" her. Sit up straight... and post up and down by also slightly diagonally.  did the gate good on the second attempt. Did livestock pen and single slalom. good pony. worked on leg yield too and getting better about riding her like Funny and Dan... follow my body :) nice.

  So... I thought Lyric MIGHT be sound today. She was pretty darn lame Sunday sadly. But then Monday, when I put her in the round pen, she was like 85% sound and was frisky. It was just too hot and humid to ride and too late. My day got away from me. So I didn't... but I was hoping that today would be far enough out from her sore foot that she would have bounced back. And after my lesson on Funny, her and Dan were running around in the field and she was bucking and playing, so... my suspicions were even more validated. Although.. she was also straddling the water trough yesterday morning. :(  I was debating taking her to Ashland to ride with Kelli instead of Dan because of what Liz had said about not riding Dan today. But then Kelli was not messaging me at all. She had said she should be done by 12:30 ish and would call me on her way home and could probably ride at 2, but then.. it was like... 1:30 and nothing. And it had rained around 12:30 and then the sky turned blue again....