Blown Away

I'm on vacation! Yay!

The weather has been crap! Boo!

I was really hoping to do a bunch of trail riding this week. But it rained all day Sunday (and was really chilly), rained Monday morning, and then we had crazy wind that ended on Tuesday afternoon. There won't be as much outdoor stuff as I was hoping would happen this week.

Indoor crafts instead. I finally put my favourite horse quote above my work-in-progress horse photo gallery.

On Tuesday my car wobbled it's way down the highway to the barn in the 70 km/h wind gusts (that's 43 mph for you non-metric people). I didn't plan on riding, but since the kids hadn't been ridden since Wednesday I needed to do something with them.

There was only one tree on the road to the barn that I had to drive around.

This was the first time that I had been in the Cover-All arena in crazy wind. Holy crap, it was loud. And flappy. I kept looking up expecting to see a big open flap that was creating all the noise, but nope, there wasn't one.

I took Cisco over to the arena for some desensitizing. I figured that his brain would explode with all of the noise and flappiness, so I took the treats and target to do some clicker training to give him something to think about.

You will need to listen with the volume on to get the effect of the wind. And yes, that is my finger on the left side. 

Surprisingly, his brain stayed in his head. I asked him to walk and halt and drop his head and he got a click and a treat when he did so. On the first pass of the scary corner he was a bit worried and tried to rush past me when I asked him to halt, but after that he was pretty good about going into the corner and sniffing at all the things.

He was so unconcerned about the noise and flappiness, that when I let him loose to run around, he stayed in a large circle and lunged around me in the scary end, and went deep into the scary corner.

To me, this was a big deal. As late as February this year that end was terrifying, and it's only been the last few weeks that I can head right down there as soon as I get on Cisco. He still looks for the birds, but isn't so quick to react to them just for being there. And in the past the sound of the vents flapping in the wind was quite worrisome to him. Today it wasn't.

Phantom, of course, could care less about the sounds from the wind and just had some fun burning off some energy. She's still shoeless, but seems a bit more comfortable even without her boot on.

More noms needed.

The wind gusts died down around 3pm. The next couple of days are supposed to be not too bad, and the chance of another big day of rain at the end of the week is dwindling. I might still make it out for a trail ride yet!