Noisy Noises

Life has been busy. I was transferred for work as of last week. I live on the north end of the city, now I work on the south end of the city, and the ponies live north of where I live.  The drive to or from work starts at 30 minutes and gets worse depending on the time of day. I go past the turnoff to the barn on my way home from work, so last week I planned ahead a couple of days and went straight out to the barn from work. That should save me 25-30 minutes of driving time a day, but it makes for a really long day - leaving the house at 8:20am and not returning until close to 10pm. I'm hoping to do this a couple of days a week until it gets super cold out. I don't know that I'll want to haul all of my cold-weather gear out to the car in the morning before I leave.

Thus I haven't managed as much saddle time over the last couple of weeks as I would have liked. I've made it out to the barn a bunch - mostly to change blankets due to the constantly changing weather. Duty visits instead of recreation visits.

Phantom got ridden again by my lesson kid. This is her waiting while kid is in the bathroom face.

Monday's ride on Cisco was short as I needed to make adjustments to the front Flair bags in my saddle. It was sitting lower than what I was happy with, so I did just enough for him to start to relax and then hopped off. I added more air back in the barn while the saddle was still on him so that it would be ready for the next ride.

Which was Thursday. And it wasn't ready. One side had taken the air, the other side had not. And would not. I was really close to chucking Cisco back out and throwing the saddle in the car to figure out at home, but the air finally went in. I think it had a kink in the tube that wasn't allowing the air to pass. It's happened before.

I have to keep my eyes up while walking through the barn - I keep almost walking into spiders hanging down from the ceiling. Rather big ones (for us up north, at least).

When we got into the arena, I wasn't sure if I was going to get on after all. They are building an apartment over the end that has the washrooms and other rooms at one end of the ring. There was a contractor working up there. Using tools. Tools like a saw, a measuring tape, and an air nailer, which also means a compressor. Cisco no likee. Especially the nail gun.

We did our TRT Method groundwork, trying to get him to find some relaxation and drop his head. It took a few minutes, but it started to get a little lower. Just a little. Another horse came in to get tacked up, and Cisco took comfort in the company of strangers and started to actually relax.

He was very good when I got on (carefully timed between nail gun bursts) and we were able to walk around on a loose rein. Then his new best friend left for a lesson outside. Cisco no likee.

The new build. I think it's going to be an apartment, but I'm really not sure. 

We had a couple of extra-forward laps at a trot around the ring. Then Cisco was saved by the arrival of another horse. Our ride continued in a pretty regular fashion, except for all of the construction noise. Which didn't really faze either horse.

It was a good educational experience for Cisco. Considering that he started by trying to go through me when the first noises, for us to be able to walk around on a long rein during breaks is a pretty significant improvement. Having another horse in the ring definitely helped, but then he's always more relaxed when he has company.

This is just another day that shows me he is now able to put scary stuff behind him once he realizes that he's not going to die. It's taken a while to get to this point. Hopefully, he continues to move forward and maybe one day I'll have a brave horse. Ideally before he's 18.