Riding Recap: 2/8 – 2/21

The second week of this month was atrociously cold, so I only ended up riding twice last week. I decided to combine these past two weeks into one since It was kind of pointless to make a whole post on two twenty-minute rides.

Sunday, February 8th

• Boyfriend and I had tickets to go see the BlueDEF Velocity Professional Bull Riding tour this day. So instead of riding, I watched cowboys try to ride some bulls like I try to ride Ax on a naughty day. It was pretty neat.

Monday, February 9th

• Another snow day with temperatures in the teens.

Tuesday, February 10th

• I managed to squeak in a ride right after class with my friend Catherine and in between lessons. (To be honest, I am writing this a week later and I don’t remember anything from our ride.) I recall some trot poles and nice changes, so I was working towards my monthly goals.

Wednesday, February 11th

• No barn today. I had an interview for a potential job and had to run to class afterwards, so that took precedence.

Thursday, February 12th

• I spent six hours working at the barn before I ever got around to my horse. By then I was frozen solid but since I had only ridden once so far I figured I needed to do something. I stuck to a short hack and tucked him back into his stall before going home and getting into my own bed.

Friday, February 13th

• Our first day of 6:30AM practice and it was in the single digits. After a team meeting instead, I checked on Ax to make sure he was all snuggly-warm and left it at that.

Saturday, February 14th – Vaneltine’s Day

• This was SmartPak shopping day while my Valentine was working (you can check out my haul here). I still had a little over an hour to spare before he got out of work, so I went to the barn to try on Ax’s new things and free lunge him a bit. He was a wild beast to say the least.

Sunday, February 15th

• Another day off for the Meatball. Darn this cold snap.

Monday, February 16th

• I am an awful horse mommy. I didn’t realize how cold it was/check the weather until after I was entirely tacked up and mounted. I don’t really think Ax minded all that much, but I usually have a rule not to ride below 20-25 degrees. I chose to stay on and be super aware to his reaction to working in the cold. He ended up being perfect though, so I guess it didn’t make much of a difference. We did some pole work on a curve, trot to canter transitions, and changes. After a little struggle with the poles and a long reaction time to my canter ques, he figured it out plus I ended up with only two naughty lead changes. Yay for improvement.

Tuesday, February 17th

• I got a little caught up in everything else I had to do due to meetings taking up some of my time later in the week, so I didn’t make it to the barn.

Wednesday, February 18th

• Yay, it was finally warm enough to ride without being worried about my horse’s lungs falling off. I got to ride Ax in my team lesson today since two horses threw shoes this week and we are short horses. We warmed up stirrupless for half an hour and went right to jumping. Long story short, Ax was a you-know-what. He turned into wild jumper horse instead of nice hunter horse. We had bucking, running away, and landing like a freight train after the fences.

Thursday, February 19th

• I probably could have ridden but I was too lazy. At least I am honest. I was at the barn for two hours before I had the chance to ride and by then I was frozen to the core so I swapped his blankets around, fed him his dinner, and went home to thaw.

Friday, February 20th

• The single digit temps and crazy windchill did not make this day riding friendly. I made it a beauty day after I free lunged and change blankets by pulling his mane and clipping his beard.

Saturday, February 21st

•  This morning was “make-up lesson” day after all of the cold temps cancelling team lessons this week and because we are still a little limited as to how many jumping horses we have, I got to ride Ax. I was kind of expecting him to be a bit of a wild child (especially since one of the other horses was) but he was amazing! Two strides into the trot I was thinking, “dang, my horse feels good!” and he stayed the same for the whole lesson. We did a quick warm up with lots of trot to canter transitions, which is tough for us since I usually only school walk to canters, and went straight to jumping. We had a few bobbles where he got a little resistant and speedy but the rest of the schooling was pretty solid for not doing too much over fences work lately.

-TC