Sunday at the Park

This is for Dad, a description of a fun Sunday.  Work all week, long hours but satisfying work, get to use the brain, challenges and some busywork,  but that is to be expected.  Then the weekend rolls around.  True, the laundry does not get done unless someone fills the washer and presses complex buttons in sequence.  The dishes are not washed unless loaded in a precise and choreographed order and more buttons pushed.  I do not have the staff of Downton Abbey and have to make due with magic boxes, the oven, washing machine and dishwasher, with obscure icons that only teenagers understand (remind me; when did a teenager ever do laundry or wash dishes?).

But then the weekend rolls around.  I escape reality and bound off to the barn. The barn can be a rough place, as in "Where did you grow up, a barn?" But we have already established my extremely high standards of cleanliness by pushing buttons, so, no, I did not grow up in a barn.

Princess greets me with, "Not now, I'm busy eating dirt off the ground since I finished my meager serving of hay hours ago and I don't feel like working and you don't ride as well as Hugh anyhow so why should I put out for you?" snarl, so fabulous to see in the morning after paying the board and training and shoeing and vet bills.

But then she agrees that I am the next best thing since sliced bread (carrots work) and we go in work mode.  She has 23 hours to laze around, one hour to work and concentrate.   The lesson is always a surprise, different mode, different exercise, always changing.  Today, we kept it small and interesting.  The last task was jumping milk cartons.  Well, not precisely milk cartons, but those plastic blocks that you can build cavalettis with, they are meant to support poles.  Hugh put two together, quite low but only 4 feet wide and no standards.  One slight step sideways and any half-way nimble horse could skirt the obstacle.  Princess trotted and then cantered over like a medal horse, perfect in every way (who is writing this???).  So a good roll is a just reward!

Princess snorts at June Bug

 They HAVE to eat the same blade of grass, in a paddock full of grass

 Has anyone told you that you are SO boring?

 Do I look cute enough?

 I don't see you...

 Maggie, where have you been?

Getting on her hocks

Plop!

Getting ready for the Full Christie

Did I tell you I was a paint?

Oh, joy!

All good things have to come to an end., 

Now, clean me up again. 

Statue pose

And clean the tack too, Ive and Rhapsody look on

Training Wheels

You remember training wheels?  You were not quite big enough for a two wheeler, but your neighbor kids are riding away independently, and your parents are already worried you are falling behind.  So they get you a bike with training wheels.  You can go chicken-shit slow and cautious, definitely not fast enough to kick in the stabilizing gyroscopic force which protects the aforementioned athletically endowed neighbors.

Well, clever trainers can create training wheels for us amateurs.  Get a horse straight and balanced and confident and they can jump the world.  So, we were instructed to go through the gymnastic, downward transition to a working trot, then downward transition to a sitting trot, get the bend and flexion, get COMPLETELY organized, straight to the fence, pick up the correct lead, and go jump it.  Afterwards, on the straight line, downward transition to a trot and repeat, several times.

When the lesson was done and over and our ponies got a well deserved walk back to the barn, a roll in the turnout and a second grooming, we could not resist measuring the efforts.  3'5", 3'6", and 3'9". Really really really.  I know there is a big difference between doing this exercise and keeping it together over an entire course, but totally appreciate the training wheels!