Lesson day

No photo today, just a little post about our lesson today.

It wasn't a perfect lesson, as in perfect behavior. But it was a good lesson in that I felt like we've come a long way.

I was a little curious as to how things would go because we haven't had a lesson in two weeks and our rides this week were a bit all over the place.

On Tuesday, I rode without stirrups the whole time to get a feel for how I can balance. It felt really good, and Bestie felt good. We jogged along for about a half hour, around the perimeter, and some smaller circles and diagonals. One of those "sitting on the sofa" rides.

On Friday, she was so sluggish I couldn't get her going. She'd jog a few steps, then fall out of it. Her whole attitude was "meh." After about 20 minutes of this, I decided to move outside to the round pen. She perked up out there - change of scenery, cooler air, more to listen to in terms of noise on adjoining properties, lots of stuff rustling in the wind. We walked around for about 10 more minutes, and I'm pretty sure she moved at a faster pace at the walk outside than she did at the jog in the indoor.

On Saturday, we went back into the lower indoor and she was fine. Much more perky. I mentioned her sluggishness to a couple other people, who said they had noticed the same with their horses. Summer doldrums? Who knows. We had a good ride.

So today, I wasn't sure what she'd be like. She was a little sluggish at the beginning, and Paula was after me to get after Bestie. After jogging the perimeter and doing some quarter lines, Paula set up a fan pattern with 3 rails on the ground. I don't know how many times we circled and went through going counter clockwise, but initial attempts were a little, um, ugly due to operator error. I didn't keep her on the circle, so we'd kind of drift out after the third rail rather than continuing to head on a circle to the left. I have this problem with getting my leg on her behind the girth - it's so awkward for me. We got better, though.

But when it was time to switch and go clockwise, Bestie decided she had had enough. No more sluggishness ... the speed demon took over. The difference is that now I can ride her speedy trot, and I have a little internal checklist of things I can do to slow her down. Sitting deep, half halts, circling. It took a while, but she finally calmed down and we walked through the fan a few times, then jogged around the  perimeter again and in a few small circles to end on a good note.

These little outbursts have become few and far between. I'm just so happy that we can work through them, that with a calm response, she does return to the task at hand.

The horses are big fans ...

... of fans! And 'tis the season for fans, and thank goodness for 'em, as we've had a few days of hot and humid weather.

I think the hard thing in Vermont is that the weather can change so quickly, and we never have enough of a stretch of any particular type of weather to get used to it. Typically (if there is anything typical about Vermont weather), when the hot and humid weather comes, it comes suddenly, with a vengeance.

When I first moved to this barn, they had two huge barn fans, one at the very end of the aisle and one in the middle of the barn. Those suckers were crazy powerful. They were probably a good 4 feet in diameter and stood a little higher. Dude and Bestie seemed to love being on the cross ties a few feet down the aisle from the midpoint fan on hot days - I couldn't blame them; it was a good spot.

The two monster fans died several years ago, and the solution was to double up on box fans in the same locations. I guess the monster fans are pretty expensive to replace. A few horses have fans on their doors. But not every horse can have one because it would overload the electricity. I tried a battery operated fan on Bestie's door last summer, but it didn't move much air and the batteries didn't last long enough to make it worth it. Larry has strategically placed a few fans above the walls in between stalls about half way down from the doubled-up fans. All in all, the whole arrangement seems to work pretty well until we get a day in the upper 80s with high humidity.

That's what we had last week, and that's when the low ceiling of the barn really holds in the heat. It's sticky and gross. The floors get wet from the humidity. The barn smells sort of zoo-like. It was worst mid week.

I had ridden Bestie on Sunday and her breathing seemed a bit rough. We didn't do much at the trot after I noticed it; we kind of took it easy. I rode again on Tuesday and she was fine. Then on Wednesday it was super hot, so I didn't ride. In fact, I ended up not riding again until my lesson today - Saturday. We were kind of off our game this week - off the regular schedule, anyway. Looking forward to getting back in the swing of things this coming week.