To ride dressage is to dance with your horse, equal partners in the delicate and sometimes difficult work of creating harmony and beauty.

Saturday, October 26, 2013

Riding through

I can't remember how I made my way to Anna Blake's blog, but I am enjoying following her. She recently had a post on on the change of seasons and remembering beloved horses long gone. Close to the end she exhorted: "Reward your horse for last summer by sticking with him in the winter, by riding through. Because that's how we survive, too. We ride through it." Love this! I don't know if I've thought of riding through the winter as rewarding my horse, I just think it's better for all of us to stay in shape/condition. And since we don't keep our horses out on pasture year-round (we wouldn't have any pasture left if we did!), I really do think my horse (all of them over the years) has appreciated getting out and moving as opposed to being relatively cooped up each winter (actually each fall/winter/spring, otherwise known as our rainy season).

October has made it easy to "ride through it." We have had such glorious weather! Today I took Lance out and about on our hill again, this time at a leisurely walk since we don't school on Sabbath. I plan to school tomorrow and every other day this coming week that I can fit in a ride; it's our last week of Daylight Savings Time and dry weather. Next Sunday we have a clinic with Julie, rain or shine!

4 comments:

Mary said...

Hasn't the weather been glorious?

Anonymous said...

Thanks, Michelle. It was a great horse weekend here, too. Lucky us.

Piccolopony said...

I agree completely! Unfortunately for the last couple of years I haven't had a facility with an indoor arena and our winters have been too cold and snowy to do much riding but this year I will finally have an indoor and I am looking forward to being able to keep Katai in shape.

Laura said...

And after the time change, eventually you can go early in the morning (though it's cold...). I told Tang that we would go out this week - it's looking like Friday at this point!