More Snow

I really need to move somewhere south.

This was what I woke up to on Friday morning:

This was in my backyard.

Yeah. More snow.

I had left blankets on the kids when I left the barn on Wednesday. It was supposed to be warmer than ideal for blanketing that afternoon, but the cold, wet weather was in the forecast before I would be back out at the barn. For once the weather forecaster had it right.

Thus I wasn't too worried about Phantom being too cold. When I arrived on Friday evening to ride, she seemed to be okay, but again her tail was tucked tightly to her butt. Just to be safe I popped her on the lunge line. She was horribly boring so I got on pretty quickly.

She was still pretty tight in her back. Not as bad as she was last weekend, but she was stiff. I also wasn't sure if she was sound - she felt inconsistently uncomfortable on her left front.

I was pleasantly surprised that her Equisense symmetry score was 7.5. I expected it to be much lower.

When I picked up a trot again after a walk break, it felt significantly better. It didn't take nearly as long to work out the stiffness as I anticipated it would. At trot, at least. I only did enough canter to say that I cantered and see how it felt, but it was really short strided.

It was a good enough ride - Phantom felt better at the end than she did at the beginning.

It snowed again almost all of Saturday. I knew the ponies would be warm enough this time because I had put on their winter layers and hoods the night before. But I couldn't make myself head out that night to ride.

The sun was scheduled to come out on Sunday though!

Sunshine = naptime.

It still wasn't at all warm - I wore fleece breeches and long johns when I went out to the barn in the morning. By the time I got ready to ride after lunch, I planned on removing the long johns and swapping into a pair of full seats. But when I went into the bathroom to get changed, I discovered that the heat wasn't turned on yet, and I had no desire to expose my arse to the elements while swapping pants. So I kept the long johns and fleece breeches on, and added my full chaps for my ride (I needed more stickability). Sadly I wasn't too warm bundled up in my layers.

Phantom came out ready to go. She felt nicely forward and a lot looser in her back. Most importantly, there was no sign of feeling uneven.

I threw in some counter canter, which I haven't schooled in ages. I kinda keep forgetting that it's a thing. She was good on the left lead, which was the first direction we went, but the right lead didn't turn out so well - partly because I had some other horses to dodge, but mostly because she was riding up (as per usual).

Again, nothing really exciting for the ride, just nice to have her forward and ready to work.

We've got a couple of days of nice-ish weather scheduled, so the ponies got turned out nekkid on Sunday afternoon. Hopefully I don't arrive to mudballs tomorrow!