An afternoon at the barn

I should know by now ... 9 times out of 10, when I'm feeling a bit draggy about going to the barn, when I get there, it's good. By good I mean that whatever was making me feel cranky usually disappears. When you're in the moment with Dude or Bestie, life is pretty simple and straightforward.

Yesterday I had a lengthy meeting to go to that involved a two-hour drive, so I left the house at 7:30 am and got back at 4:30 pm. It was a good meeting, but being gone for that chunk of time on a Saturday left me feeling less than enthusiastic about going to the barn. 

The horses are still confined to their stalls because the paddocks are really soupy. I brought each of them out to the indoor to have some stretching time. I romped with Dude off his lead, then handwalked him. Bestie strolled around as she's not much of a romper, then I handwalked her a couple of laps then grazed her outside on one of the few teeny tiny patches of grass available at this time of year.

Captured one of Dude's 3 rolls. Drop and roll, drop and roll, drop and roll.

This always makes me laugh. Who's the handsome guy in the mirror?

Checking out the action down in the new arena. At one point Jubilee was in the other arena staring back at him, but I couldn't get them both in the frame.

Bestie goes down much more daintily than Dude, and one prolonged roll is good. No multiples for her.

Hard to tell from the photo ... mud, mud and more mud.

The big melt

Over the last few days the sun has been out and the temperatures have been in the 40s, so we've lost a lot of our snow cover. With the snow gone and the warmer temps, the ground has started to soften up and get pretty muddy so we're expecting turnout time to be limited for a while. Hard to tell for how long.

The horses were in yesterday due to the paddock conditions, but they were able to get out for a few hours first thing this morning because the ground had firmed up overnight. They definitely have spring fever. Yesterday I let Dude out in the old indoor arena and he pranced around snorting, and worked himself up into a tizzy at the slightest little noise - and there were lots of noises because it was quite windy. Even though he's been in the arena a million times when horses and people have walked down the attached aisle to access the new arena, it was cause for much excitement yesterday.

When Turbo passed by, Dude stuck his head out to say hello. So cute.

After Dude got bored, I brought him back in and then took Bestie out to the indoor to lunge her. While she was pretty good on the lunge line, she definitely used the occasional appearance of people and horses passing by in the aisle to blow off a little steam - tail way up in the air, huge trot, eye rolling in the direction of the aisle.

Thank goodness for the two indoors. It seems that all the riders really prefer the new one (it is brighter and warmer), so when I've brought Dude and Bestie out to the old one, we haven't run into anyone else and they have had plenty of space and lots of time to roll, stretch and wander around. Looks like that will be our routine for a while.