Ok, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but it was a FUN lesson. Dude's so awesome; I've only ridden him once since we got back from Florida on the 25th, but I hopped right on and he was fine. He's just so "whatever" under saddle. I used the wool quarter sheet today since it was cold and rode him at the walk for about 15 minutes to warm him up as the lesson prior to mine was finishing up. That horse was being longlined and Dude was fascinated with the whole thing.
Emma had set up ground poles and a little pole maze, so we combined doing those with some walking and trotting. Dude is still fighting me about staying on the wall, and that gets a bit old. But he was pretty responsive once we got going at the trot, and it was fun going through the maze. In fact, he seemed to enjoy it--he tried to veer back into it once when we trotted past it later on. It was a good workout for him and me. By the time we were done after about 45 minutes and I rode him down the path a little ways, then jumped off, my legs were tired. There seems to be nothing that works the same muscles, and the bottom line is that I need to get my act together and ride more. It's been hard with the cold and work demands.
Bestie got to hang out with her buddies all day. I was going to lunge her but ran short on time since I needed to get the car back home for Maddie's use. They introduced a new mare into her field today, which I was nervous about. It went well though. The new mare seems to be pretty passive and anxious not to cause any problems, so they all survived the day just fine. Now that there's four in the group they're going to be moved to a bigger field. No other horses had been in their field before yesterday, so they've all gotten a workout walking around in two feet of undisturbed snow. Bestie's ankles had been a little heavy the night before when I saw her, but today with the snowpack on her all day, her "cankles" were gone.
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