Yay It's Muddy!

Cisco's ride on Tuesday was, yet again, rather boring. We did some more poles, he got pretty bored pretty fast, we had a horrible left lead tranter canter after which he coughed, so again I let him off easy just in case it was still related to the smoke. He also seems to be a bit tender-toed after his trim last week, at least when we walk on the gravel or asphalt. So maybe that helped us achieve the half lap of tranter that we got, which isn't normal.

You can see where the hair has been lost to the right of the corner of his mouth from the crusty crud that he got for some reason. The zinc oxide cleaned up the crud pretty good but I wish I knew what caused it!

The other thing that didn't help us get the canter was that his girlfriend was being ridden in a lesson at one end of the arena. When I was getting ready to get on he gave her his adorable under-his-breath nickers, but wasn't too bad about being distracted through the ride. Until we tried to canter, at which point he used the unbalanced fast trot as an excuse to fall out through his shoulder and bulge towards her.

I got out to the barn late that night due to stupidly slow traffic on my way home from work (for no apparent reason) so I didn't have time to really do anything with Phantom. She got a chance to go for a quick play in the arena. I didn't give her any Ventipulmin so I didn't really want her to do too much. After she flew around the arena for two full laps, I shut her down and left it there. Her breathing was good after that but I didn't want to push it.

It rained, and Phantom miraculously stayed clean. Well, cleanish.

Remember how I said we'd barely had any rain this year?

Thursday morning. Very wet and very very muddy.

So that's changed.

Cisco had to sweet talk his way past the guard mares back into the shelter when I turned him out after putting his rainsheet on. 

It's rained three days this week so far. It's supposed to rain most of Friday, and be frikkin' cold. Ponies are wearing rain sheets as Friday night the temperature is supposed to be just a couple degrees above freezing - not fun if you are wet. I'm really hoping it doesn't actually snow overnight. I turned the heat back on in the house and the big duvet will be back on the bed tonight - it's still spring for another 2 weeks!