Well, it's officially November here in the blustery northwest. Yes I realize it's been November for going on two weeks now, but given the weird shot of warmth and sunshine and our pretty decent weather patterns, the raging wind storm that fianlly blew into town finally caught my brain up to the calendar.
Monday was a rager. By the time I was driving to the barn, the leaves/pine needles/debris that was being shaken loose form the trees literally looked like snow, and I ended up dodging fallen branches for a majority of my ride out to the barn. Couple the crisp, blowing air with P's two days off and I showed up to find a bug-eyed puffing monster mare. I let her trot around the ring on her own for a bit, and she wasn't too amped up, but she was snorting at every wind gust as though she was taking extreme offense.
I wasn't counting on a lesson, but P was being pretty good and the BO was there so we went for it. Just to take the edge off we ended up giving her the world's tiniest dose of Ace, which probably did more for my piece of mind than P's.
I could tell she really hadn't had much of a cocktail since she stayed light in the bridle and wasn't steam rolling into the ground like she has before when moderately medicated... Ultimately it was a decent ride. We stayed pretty relaxed, only a couple moments of stickiness and our lateral work was decent. We made a first attempt at some half passes (via the shoulder-in, add haunches, float sideways method), but it wasn't super productive. P was great with the leg yields, and accepting of shoulder in, but add in the haunches was downright mindblowing. She did ok, but I was definitely confusing her so we didn't stay on that move for long.
(Ok, I just escaped from a 7 hour Manager Meeting, and really want to get to the barn, which is going to make the rest of this update somewhat... er... abbreviated)
Monday = decent.
slight cocktail, good work, no big fights. Pia got new mints. She likes them
Tuesday = better.
less wind. I popped her into the ring right before her big handsome boyfriend/cousin (another Wishes and Dreams) came in the ring. She swooned. He swooned.
We did nice stretchy trot... he did half passes and canter extensions. I'm pretty sure we actually had our face in FRONT of the vertical the entire ride. (YAY)
We had our nose on the ground (yessssss)
BUT we also were very cranky about every single walk/trot transition (fail)
That's it. Off to the barn.
Hopefully Wednesday = more better.
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