Yet Another Week Off and Trying to Ride

Another week off, another week of not managing to get much riding in.

I did my substitute teaching gig both days on the first weekend. Long days, exhausting, but it paid for one horse's board for a month, so totally worth it.

Which meant that Monday was really my first day of vacay. I took it easy, spent some much needed time tidying in the house (ugh, so much more to do), had a lovely nap, and wandered out to the barn in the evening. My plan was mostly just to wash Phantom's brown tail and hope to make it white again, and a bit of quick groundwork/lunge with Cisco. I was successful with Cisco and mostly successful with Phantom.

Cisco had a potential land shark sighting out the back door in the dark. Land sharks no longer are super scary as they once were!

Tuesday morning had me spend far too much time playing Candy Crush before I rolled myself out of bed (got through 20 levels since I had a bunch of boosters - can't let those go to waste). I made it out to the barn around dinnertime to get both horses ridden.

Cisco was nice and relaxed as there were other horses in the arena. Thus he gave me lots of nice work at a trot. I also managed to figure out our right bend problem. When tracking right, if I look backwards over my right shoulder, right bend is easy. Apparently, it's all about the positioning of my body.  So for the next little bit, I'll be getting a crick in my neck and hope not to run into anything when riding Cisco to the right.

Oh, Phantom. Why must you make it difficult? (I'm not complaining that my 16 year old horse is feeling good!)

Phantom was happy to try to work far too hard and forward, as she has been since she got her hocks done. I keep trying to convince her to trot around slowly so that we can work on being soft, but nope, she has other ideas. And she is a very determined woman.

I was happy with both of my rides. I was even happier that I managed to (mostly) stay out of the barn drama that had erupted through the day, I'm just gonna keep my head down and deal with my own horses for the next few days. Might need to take headphones out to give some people the hint that I don't want to talk...