Making hay while the sun shines.

Snow was predicted by ALL of the  weather forecasters in this area for the last week.

And although the temperature went from 70 degrees a week ago to 32 degrees last night, you actually have to have a little bit of precipitation in the air for it actually to 'snow'. Go figure- the cold front pushed the rain front a little bit south of my area, the East Bay Area that is, and we did not get snow at sea level as they so gleefully predicted.

All I can say - ' There is a God!'

And we have been blessed by cool days- still with muddy bits- and cold nights.




So I have been riding the piss out of my horse. Or at least I've attempted to. He is such a punk anyway and he feels really good, so our riding time has somehow reverted to 'I'm-gonna-have-to-school-you-first' time.
Sheesh!
What with the bucking and running off and head shaking, I'm surprised we are both still here! I've wanted to shoot him between the eyes, then turn the gun on myself! ( Don't wo-ory I won't do either!)

Here is the pattern I have set up.


There is 18 feet between the far right poles and to the first middle pole, then 18 feet beteen the last middle pole and the first pole on the left. Six feet- a stride- in between the middle poles.

Our objective- to fine tune stride and cadence. In the exercise I found ( in the Journal a few months ago) says not to worry- we won't get it right the first time out.

I says to myself, "Jeez, it's just some poles on the ground, and a few feet in between...how hard could it be?

Famous last words, to be sure.

It is simple. And it is hard.

And the article was correct. We didn't get it right. Not the first time, or the time after that or the time after that...

......well, you get the picture.

We DID finally get actual 'lope over' with only one hind foot CLONKING' and I figured that was as good a place to stop as any. The other 100 times we had loped over it we had DE-STROYED the set up...

Or jumped it...

Or avoided it...

Or bucked through it....

So the loping part came as a nice change.

After that we did some things he is good at doing.

Walk overs.

The Bridge.....

The gate too.

I still have another day before the rain starts again, so I'll be out there doing those same lope overs tomorrow.

Some people just never learn.....