Sunday, February 19, 2017

We rode outside!

Sure, come summertime riding outside will seem like no big deal, but the snow/ice on the ground heretofore has prevented me from even wanting to do any sort of hand walking outside. All I've done riding-wise is 20 minutes or so of mostly walk and trot in the covered arena, with a little canter thrown in for good measure.

Well, yesterday we had intermittent rain, but between the rain it was clear enough to go out. The rain had washed snow away in enough places that I could do a little walk back to the manure pile, a little circle around some trees in the snow, back to the barn, and down the driveway to walk through the puddle that is at the entry to one of the pastures. Pony had fun playing splashy-lips with the puddle before walking through it.

I've been doing some trot poles and yesterday opened up my box of cavaletti blocks to make the middle pole just a little higher. We only did that a couple times, but it was fun nonetheless.

Another thing I've done a couple times is more tarp work. The dreaded tarp!!!! But Pony has been so good! The first time I got her to calmly walk over it going to the left. To the right she'd trot over it, but no balking or explosions or spooking or anything like that. I do bribe her with cookies. Today we did some tarp work again and she calmly walked over it and stopped and stood on it going in each direction so she got Big Cookies for such a job well done.

Of course it snowed this morning so I didn't get to ride outside, but spring is coming - it must be!!!

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