Rainy Riding

I woke up before the alarm this morning to a familiar drumming on the roof and pushed aside the curtains to reveal mother nature's tears, which had been steadily falling all night. "Great" I thought, rolling out of bed and into a pair of clean jeans, "soggy ponies." A t-shirt, rain boots and a jacket later, I was scribbling out a tuition check and climbing into the car.

The rain was still falling when I got to the barn and I was not at all surprised to see the horses clumped together on the back hill of the pasture, dotted among the trees. I started water and threw down hay without so much as a knock at the back door (yes, the donkey knocks to come in). It wasnt until I was getting ready to mix feed that Emmy's face suddenly came through the window. She looked around and when she caught sight of me her eyes widdened and she let out a low throaty whinny. Of coarse I couldn't leave her like that, so in they came...a wet Emmy, Hokey and Johnny followed by the hoodlems Mike, Doug and Mandie. Breakfast was dished and I made sure that everyone had clean, dry stalls before I got back in the car, stripped my rain gear and headed out to look at a barn for Johnny to live at during the school year.

The barn was close to school, and after my tour I stopped by the college to pay my tuition, and then decided to head over to the school barn to see if anyone was hanging around. There were a few cars parked in the lot when I got there and I slipped into the arena to find A having a lunge lesson with C and my good friend S hacking around a pretty grey Oldenburg. "KATE!!!" they all yelled, and so it was hugs and hellos for a while. Needless to say, S's ride ended right about then hehe. I went with her back to the barn to untack Winny and poked my head into the tack room to find our school horse manager checking off and arranging school saddles. "Did you miss me?" I asked, to which she responded "Hey!!!" There was a really nasty training saddle sitting out, covered with mold and sporting just about the highest cantle I had ever seen. "Ooooo Camille..." I said pointing to it "where did you find that masterpiece?" "Burried in a trunk somewhere" She laughed. "It's supposed to be for saddlebreaking the training babies, but I think that I should maybe assign it to you for the semester." "Only under one condition" I told her, "I want the mold too!"

And so we all laughed and talked and caught up until M arrived to teach S's lesson on Skye, and which point we set up a gymnastic line and the whole talk, catch up, laugh thing stated again. We discussed some IHSA things, which makes me giddy a bit just thinking about it :)

And then I drove home in a monsoon.

When I finally got home I went back to the barn and saddled Johnny for a ride. It had stopped raining and so we headed out for a hack on the trails. He was quite fresh after having the day off yesterday and I had him in Emmy's old show bit (just to see how he went in it) so he was lifting his back and actually being quite responsive. After our little hack we went into the field (the footing was surprisingly good) and worked on some flat work, like straightness and lifting his shoulder going to the right. I was being a little more demanding of him today, asking him to focus to my body cues and not just try to PREDICT what we were going to do (which he loves...) He got a little frustrated sometimes, but we ended with some beautiful canters and some really nice transitions. I'm hoping that tomorrow will be dry enough to jump a bit more.

Thats all for now :)

Peace.Love.Ponies.