Oregon ducks

Now that we are 'enjoying' normal weather for this time of year, I keep an eye on the sky (and my weather app) and work horses when I can. This morning was dry with intermittent showers forecast for the rest of the day, so I headed to the barn.

I decided to work Stella first. It had been a few days since I have had the saddle on her and yesterday she got a nice long turn-out for exercise, so I decided to lunge her with tack. Oh my goodness; you'd have thought she had never seen a saddle pad and saddle before – or that she had had night terrors about them since the last time I used them on her! Even slower and quieter work than usual finally got her saddled and bridled, but not without moments of panic. Did it have to do with prepping her in her paddock instead of her stall? 🤷‍♀️

Lunging went well enough, even though she was still more skittish than usual. I let her motor around in both directions at her own speed for awhile, and then decided to work on making her walk so she wouldn't end up really winded and sweaty. By reeling her in while telling her to walk whenever she sped up, then letting her out as long as she maintained a walk, she caught on quickly. Even though I can't use side reins yet to help her use herself better, I think she is starting to use the muscles on the underside of her neck less and stretching more over her topline, showing some future potential.

By the time I was done lunging Stella, I was thoroughly chilled by the biting wind and headed back to the house. I figured I could get Lance out for a ride during one of the breaks between showers.

The breaks weren't as regular or as long as I expected. By mid-afternoon, I thought I saw the clouds lightening some so headed back to the barn while it was still showering in order to have Lance saddled and ready to go once the rain stopped. When it hadn't stopped by the time we were ready, I figured a few raindrops wouldn't make us melt (love my synthetic Wintec saddle!) and mounted up. My plan was to walk in the arena for 10 minutes and then go down the land and back and we did just that – in varying amounts of rain the whole time. 🙄

Lance was a (extremely low energy) trooper, and he got his needed exercise. But I need Alanna to teach me how to take better selfies!