Sunday Energy

Last week sucked for horses.

I only made it out on Monday night (at -31 degrees Celsius!). For the rest of the week, I either had to work (Tue/Thurs), had horrible stomach cramps (Wed), or it was super cold (Fri & Sat).

The good news is that it looks like we have survived the worst of the cold, and by the end of this week we are supposed to start getting normal temperatures. Next week's temperatures all have daytime highs just over the freezing mark. It's not bikini weather, but after the coldest February in 40 years, and the 4th coldest since they started recording these things, we'll take it!

It's still cold though.

This week has a couple of doable days for riding. So on Sunday I made sure that both horses had a chance to get their zoomies out in preparation for me to be in the tack on Monday.

Neither horse was impressed with me since I brought them in at dinnertime. They had a bit to eat first - I had asked the girl doing chores to just give their pens 1 flake per horse, and I would throw the rest in after I was done with them. The horses counted those single flakes and definitely knew that they had been shortchanged!

Cisco came in with the brain hamster spinning on its wheel. He was basically doing the fingers stuck in his ears going "lalalalala I can't see you" and trying to push through me and being obnoxious. We didn't dally for long in the barn (I let him eat his soupy meal first) and I took him over for a lunge.

There had been a jump clinic during the day so there were jumps set up all over the arena. The only spot to lunge was right in the spookiest of corners. Perfect!

Cisco was super buzzy, but not in a spooky way. Just a very forward way. Which I don't mind at all. Once the hamster started to get a little bit tired, I put his brain to work, asking for lots of transitions. I even tried quick canter/trot/canter transitions, with various degrees of success. Mostly successful going to the left, not so much to the right because a couple of horses had entered the arena and they were super distracting and it's hard to canter when you are gawking at the other end of the arena.

I actually liked the look of his canter. His stride seemed longer and he seemed more relaxed through his body, instead of the shorter, head up in the air type canter I see all too often.

When walking him out I noticed the flower box set up from the clinic. It seemed like a good thing for Cisco to have to go over!

Tall flowers to tiptoe through.

Of course, he wasn't sure about it, but tried really hard to figure out what I wanted from him. It wasn't too long before I was lunging him over it at a trot, and he made really awkward movements over it - not sure if he should jump it, or just trot through it, so kind of combination of both.

I had given Phantom her Ventipulmin when I arrived at the barn, so she was ready to go for a run when I brought her in. I'm happy to say that it seemed to make a difference - she was puffy after galloping around, but not short puffy.

She had a ton of energy. 

She's has this thing these days about revving up coming out of that left corner going down the long side as you can kind of see in the gif. She kept cutting it closer and closer to the jump, and then had to start scrambing out of the turn so that she didn't run into the fence. I checked her shoes at one point to make sure they were both still tightly on. Silly mare.

I'm hoping that Sunday's escapades will mean decent rides on Monday. And that I won't be super sore on Tuesday. Not holding out for that one though!