Here comes the flood!

Yesterday the weather was quite warm, into the mid 50s I believe. This meant that I wouldn't have to deal with Henry's scooty-OMG it's cold attitude. Yay! However, there was also a great deal of precipitation yesterday. Hmm...

When I got to the barn there was a jumping lesson again. I heard the trainer talking to the boarder afterward and she's a lot younger than I thought! She's looking for high schools! It's hard to tell when some young riders are so dedicated, and so quiet, but I suppose I was like that when I was her age as well (only sans horse).

Henry made some faces at me as I was tacking up, probably because it was shortly after he had been fed and he wanted to keep eating his hay. Oh well. My limited schedule becomes your inconvenience, buddy! There was another boarder there whose horse is in the stall next to Henry and she too was tacking up, but got into the ring before me (I waited until the jumping lesson was over, so as not to get in the way of the HUGE WB careening around and hurdling over things.

As I was getting ready to get on, I noticed something shiny in the ring footing - turns out it was someone's pocketknife (thankfully closed)!!! Then I started to walk around on the buckle and hmmm... what's that noise? Above the din of the rain on the metal roof, I heard an engine. I looked out the end door and there was a tractor, lights on, idling in the mud. Apparently there would have been a deluge followed by a very muddy ring if not for the impromptu ditches being dug. Henry was a little wary of all these shenanigans but after a couple of laps around the ring he settled down quite a bit. The only thing left to deal with was my neighbor-boarder, who apparently thought it was quite alright to practically run into Henry on her way around the ring. Um, what? Good thing he's not a kicker!

I warmed up with some shoulder-in at the walk, as well as some small circles and halts. His trot work was pretty great, though halfway into my ride there was another lesson starting (2 riders) so I mainly stayed on a large 20(ish) meter circle at A. Thankfully the instructor of that lesson made a point of asking neighbor-boarder not to follow too closely, saving me the trouble. I tried to work on some canter-walk transitions when I had a clear path, which was a little difficult, but towards the end we were doing quite a bit better than last week.

I hate sitting at a desk all day, and I really need to get back to the gym, because my position is one of the most important things I need to work on. How can I expect Henry to work and be his best when I'm tipping forward or being inconsistent with my aids? I'm not being fair. It's just so tempting to sleep as late as I can in the morning, hit the barn right after work, and not even think about the gym, but the consequences are *ahem* starting to show. I'm REALLY not a morning person but I might have to try to muster the motivation to get up and work out BEFORE work, because there's really no other time in the day I have free, but winter weather makes it oh-so-nice to stay under all my blankets when I wake up...

These time (and motivtion) limitations will certainly be exacerbated next month, when I will be taking a class (or two) at the community college, working full-time, trying to move my horse up to 1st level & taking lessons, and teaching a lesson at the barn... the BO asked me if I would be interested in teaching a beginner level weekly night lesson - um, YES!?! I taught a few private lessons there before I left for college, usually small kids getting acclimated before joining a group lesson. The lesson I would be teaching next month would be a beginner-level group lesson of college students (they get a PE credit - how cool is that?) and would involve teaching grooming, tack, anatomy, safety, basic riding technique, position, etc; a lot of what I've done at summer camp in years past, only with people whose attention span is longer than 15 minutes. I'm excited to hone my skills and I am finding more and more how much I love meeting new people, so hooray!

I have my own lesson tonight, and I can't wait to find out what we'll be working on. I will be using my quarter sheet to warm up with (I am keeping it in my locker, under my saddle as I read on COTH that the wooden rack could damage the flocking) because it has suddenly gone from 55 yesterday to... 30 degrees out today. Blech.