Quick post

I've been working like mad lately. Freelance work is picking up for me (which is great) but I am wiped out all the time. Wednesday, I decided to take a personal day from work knowing that I'd be working a 13 hour day Thursday, regular work Friday, the farm Saturday and more freelance on Sunday. I needed a day to reset. Plus, the forecast was gorgeous! Sunny skies and temps in the 60's!

Emily and I decided to take Riley and her new horse Brody for some fitness work and a hack. They are very similar in some ways (ahem, slow pokes) and they both enjoy having a buddy for hacks. Their field as I have mentioned previously, is 20 acres with a gradual hill. The footing is really nice, especially around the perimeter and it's perfect for fitness work. the only real challenge is explaining to Riley that YES, we do have to work in YOUR field. We started off with some trots on the hill (about a 1/3 of a mile) then we did some sweeping figure eights and the top where the terrain flattens out. Riley was great, forward and in front of my leg and I got some nice contact work out of him at the same time. He was still stiff to the right, but since we had such a huge space to work in I didn't have to nag him as much to bend. I would really like to get him off my right inside leg more, but baby steps. We tooled around at the trot for awhile then we checked the rest of the perimeter for ground hog holes. While we were doing this we saw one go into their shed! We only found one hole in the field, phew... but we're going to have to figure out a way to flag them for us while we're riding and for the owners when they go out there to mow. We got back to the gate and decided to do one big circuit at the canter and both boys were very well behaved. I got into two-point and just let Riley move out in front of my leg. Neither of them got silly at all at and we finished up our fitness work with a long trot at the top of the hill. We took them for a little hack around the property so Brody could practice stream crossing (we are so lucky to have an actual stream to practice with!), but to get there we had to pass a patch of woods where there were about a dozen deer bouncing around. Again, both boys kept a lid on it and Riley led the way down to the stream. Brody was a total champ, though he was more interested in drinking all the water! We walked the boys up to the sheep and rams to say hello, schooled the crossing a few more times and headed back to the barn. Poor Riley was exhausted, he's had to work so hard lately (sarcasm).

Tired pony hacking back to the barn. Riding in a t-shirt!!!!!!

The weather was scheduled to be really nice overnight, so I stuck Riley's sheet on and stuck him out in the pasture that shares a fence line with the cows! Mean Mommy! But he's going to have to get over them at some point. He and Henry high-tailed it as far away as possible. Hopefully, he's feeling less worried about them in general?

Later, another co-op member showed up and she wanted to bring her show horse in to get him ready for Devon in May. He's been living out for the the last 6 months so it was time to get him less feral:) His field is wayyy up past Riley's and it's a good 1/2 mile walk back to the barn, so we schemed up a little plan to drive up there, feed the others, change them into sheets and pony him back. Of course hilarity ensued... it always does with us.

First, we called the boys for dinner. Two came running immediately (the same two that came galloping up while we were hacking past their field and the scary deer (thanks, boys)... but the other was no one to be found. A few minutes later a slightly panicked horse comes bursting through the field with his medium blanket flailing around like a cape. Uh oh. He was understandably panicked and we tried to calm him as he galloped across the field. As he past the shed he must have stepped on the blanket and was going so fast that the entire thing ripped off leaving a small piece around his neck, he jumped a pile of sticks like a seasoned eventer and came up for his dinner. As soon as we realized he was fine and not going to tumble or kill himself we all burst out laughing. I went to retrieve the remainder of the blanket from the field and pull the piece off from around his neck. The blanket is dead, but no one was hurt in the process! Ahhh, horses! It was clear once I spread the blanket on the ground that he had gotten the back caught in a tree probably from itching against something, he got caught and then panicked. Luckily the straps all broke the way they should.

What was left of his blanket. This was hanging around his neck. Very high-fashion, no?

We grabbed her show pony and she sat in the back of my car while we ponied he from there. He's apparently an old pro at this and walked and trotted along with us. What a good boy!

NBD. The same wild 6 year old that cooled himself out last week in the indoor!

That's all for now. I'm hoping to get some riding/lunging in tomorrow and maybe I can get Emily to put a training ride on Riley on Sunday since I'll be working.

Ps. All this talk about working has got me thinking about a post regarding affording our horses, board, co-ops and the like. I wonder if that would be interesting for everyone???