Weaving, Riding and Arithmetic: 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!