Less than a month to freedom

This time of year I measure everything in my life around how much longer until tax season is over. Just putting out there that in a month this will all be over and on April 16th at this time I will not be working. I can’t wait to have my regular life back.

On Monday P and I went for a little bareback jaunt. We didn’t do anything crazy, just an easy hack around.

P found time to gnaw on Mikey’s face

Then he posed for a photo

Isn’t he just the cutest?

One more pic of me with the handsome boy. Pretty sure Christie is yelling “P p p p” really fast to get his ears up at this point.

Tuesday I had a lesson with the stump. He was good again, although I had trouble finding a good rhythm to sit cantering to the left. I’m thinking that might be one of my signs that he needs his back injected again. He hasn’t shown any other real symptoms yet and I’m going to try to stretch him to April 15th so that in the future we won’t have busy season back issues. If he needs some robaxin and to not jump to stay comfy until we get to MSU then that’s what we will do. We shall see.

Anyways, on to jumping. We did some little warm up courses where we trotted four X’s in a pattern. Then we did trotting the first, canter the next two, then trot the last one. Stampy is great for this kind of thing since he doesn’t really anticipate. We go to do our first full course and the first single and line go well, but as we turn a corner someone had set down a saddle on a bench and it was evidently terrifying. So we had to take a quick stare at the saddle break before continuing on with our course. After that I had a much more enthusiastic awake horse, but he was still adjustable.

For my equitation course I did my usual of getting too conservative and messing up the rhythm of the course. Argh! Afterwards I went back and redid a rollback and got the rhythm right. I’m hoping this is just an indoor issue for us and not some new permanent mental block I’m getting.

Wednesday I rode Mr P in a saddle. He didn’t take any bad steps in the front foot that’s been sore due to a split in his frog. He did however seem a bit stiff overall. We went through all our paces and he really loosened up at the canter.

Thursday was an interesting lunge night. I was so excited to get to lunge in peace and quiet. I was running late though, with an hour to get everything done before closing. Someone had left a pole out where I lunge so I left it there for Stampy to go over. All was fine – the trot to the right was a bit lazy, but he was giving me the snaky neck if I tried to push it, so I knew crazy pony was in there somewhere. Got prepared and asked for canter and all was going well until Stampede stepped ON the pole and killed it and then got scared.

Broken stuff

So I couldn’t really get him to settle back down to canter that way so we switched and did some good work to the left before finishing up with a little bit of right lead canter to prove we could be civilized.

This is what he does to pose for photos, stare up at random things.

Yesterday I got out to the barn at 5:30 (yes I worked all day) and tacked up the tall beast. Well I should start with my barn arrival. Come in, say hi to the boys, grab P’s water jug (for soaking his grain) and walk down the aisle, get pooped on by bird on the head, get sprayed by water faucet because hose is kinked and there’s a pressure release valve, proceed to go elsewhere to fill jug, and then start getting tack out to ride the stump.

So I will admit that after the poop on the head and the water spraying I was thinking maybe it would be a bad day to ride. But I can’t miss a ride so I get ready anyways. The beast was being so so. Not really focused but not really bad. Making up a few things to spook at. The one time he was being spooky I had hit him with the crop behind my leg. Next thing I know I feel something grazing my leg. I look down and my crop is in two pieces. Hmmm.

Crop death

So I decided my three bad things were over and Stampy and I proceeded to do some nice canter work with no crop.

Then we took a picture where it’s light outside!

Stampy’s new bridle looks even better outdoors. Swoon. I think I’m an Aramas convert!