Happy September everyone.

How was your first day of the new month? Mine was pretty good. I got to go and ride horses today, which was nice.

When I got to the barn this morning my boss was there and someone picking up horses. He was picking up Cherokee (who I’ve written about) and his next door neighbor, Estrella. They were moving to a new barn closer to the owners home on the other side of town. The person who was picking them up was Mark, who I know from a couple years ago at my old stables. I hadn’t seen him face to face for a while, so we did a quick catch up before he hauled the horses away.

I started my day off with Diamond. He was good but a little bit sluggish. Yesterday he had a lesson where he was jumping 3′ high fences, so he deserves to be a little bit sluggish and tired. We didn’t work for too long, 20ish minutes or so. He likes to drop his shoulder to the inside when we are cantering to the right, especially down in the far corner and when we are doing circle work.

After Diamond I worked Ella. She was her usual self; a little bit of a pill. She stood nice and quiet in the crossties but was a bit of a wiggle worm while we were working. But we managed to work through it and got her going straight. She also was over bending and just trying to get away from the bit. But I asked her to move forward and listen to my leg cues and she did. When I put her back it was very important to stuff her face with the hay that I had pulled her away from earlier.

Next came Remington, aka Remi. He was a new horse for me to ride, but he has been at the stables for a while. He’s a little bit green (inexperienced), and doesn’t really understand the concept of bending around ones leg. So it was a lot of lateral and bending work for him today. We did multiple figure 8’s across the arena, trying to get him to bend on the corner parts. He did good, was nice and bended for me on the circles and had a nice forward trot. When I asked him to canter it was kind of rough. The canter, I mean, not the transition, that was smooth. He’s smoother to the left than he is to the right.

Once I was done with Remi I moved onto Dude. Nothing exciting happened today, which is a good thing for him. We walked around for 20 minutes or so, doing figure 8’s and serpentine’s through the arena just to break up the boredom of going around in circles. 

Once I was done with him I was done with my day. I stayed a little longer and cleaned my saddle and tried out a new saddle conditioner, which my saddle has just soaked up. Its going to take a while to make the leather not thirsty anymore. Which is a good thing. If I keep doing it for the next couple times I ride maybe it’ll help me out. Maybe I’ll go and buy my own saddle conditioner from the saddle maker and keep it at home and clean it once I am done with riding so I don’t use it all up at the barn. Decisions decisions.

I met up with my boyfriend quickly for lunch. He was on his lunch and I made a lucky guess and tracked him down. Woohoo! Yay for me for knowing my boyfriends habits… sometimes. But it was just a quick visit because Gucci had an appointment with the farrier this afternoon.

By the time I had gotten to Gucci they had already started on him, which was fine. I can normally trust Gucci and my farrier to get along. But today they weren’t. Either my farrier was in a bad mood and Gucci wasn’t helping or Gucci had put him in a bad mood. I’m thinking its the former. There was just some angry vibe coming off my farrier. But he was good and didn’t take it out on Gucci. Gucci might not have stood his best, but at least they got the job done and Gucci now has pretty new feet.

He’s been a really good boy. Yesterday I got him out after giving him some new bedding and he just followed me around without a halter or a lead rope on. The same with today after the farrier. He just followed me around like a big dog. I love him to death and the bond that we have is super special. Plus, how could you not fall in love with that face?

I’m not really sure what else is going on today. I have turned on Psych as background noise while I am working on my blog. I might color a little later on, I’m not really sure.

Just keep swimming!