Don’t shy away: Dressage lesson!

Man, I haven’t had a good dressage lesson in…2 months? Soo many things came up, unfortunately.

Nov we had extreme flooding, so had to wait for the roads/arena to dry up, and there was a gasoline shortage too. Fun!

So naturally I had to get video. Still wish I’d gotten it from the right, it was a touch nicer.

Dec we had abscesses for weeks (not so fun), snowstorms, holidays. Boy that really adds up! We also had extreme cold- a week and a half of -9 so people had frozen pipes, frozen/black ice on roads and a ton of snow. Needless to say, not a productive month.

Jan my trainer got COVID so we had to wait until she was feeling better, and now she is! Yay!

And I was thrilled with how lovely Oats was feeling. Man this guy- 20 years old and he blows me away with how lovely and accepting he was in my lesson. We worked on a little pole circuit, and to the right he was foot-perfect. To the left, we started off really well but managed to kind of blow it to the pink poles. SIGH. Something to work on, as I know going left causes my body to twist in ways I don’t really want, lol. Oh well, guess it can’t be totally perfect, can it?? It was close!

Good boy Oaty, I love you!

When best laid plans…

So I was pretty excited to get BACK TO JUMPING!! Yes! With my dear Oaty. He was moving rock solid on Wednesday, just really nicely and feeling awesome…I thought my lesson on Thursday was going to be awesome!

Man do I ever miss this!!!!!! 

Spoiler: He was lame 😦

He had the flat-tire feeling he had a few months ago, and I suspect it was due to him playing too hard with his buddies in the field. The last time this happened (his flat tire..) he was sore for a few days. He had played too hard with his neighbour horse and the next day when I went to ride= lame. This time, he was turned out with his buddies in the field during the day, and at night I went to ride him= lame.

He thinks he’s 10 years old still, not 18 going on 19 and elderly.

EFFFFF

So this couldn’t have happened, say, when I had 2 months of NO lessons? I am literally on my second lesson in two months (going on 3) and boom. No lesson. ARGH horses!!!!

I am trying not to get too wrapped in up in the downward spiral that I love getting sucked in to when he goes lame…. ughhhhhhhhh. Not sure when I can lesson again, I was going to see how he is tonight, with some more Previcox. Damn damn damn. 😦

Week that wasn’t

Continuing on the theme of general ‘blah-ness’ for the week, I ended up missing my jump lesson last night due to getting stuck in a major traffic jam that didn’t even end up resolving until god knows when…The highway was shut down for hours.

This was exactly a year ago- and we are going to Hopoxia on Saturday! Sadly the weather seems committed to be lousy…

After two hours, I though for sure I was just around the corner from the barn (about 1km) and then home free- turned the corner and BLAM! Cars were parked and people were out walking around. Nobody was going anywhere 😦

That was that. I managed to turn around and went grocery shopping instead of riding. That means Oats gets three days off in a row (highly unusual) because I have evening plans tonight (Music bingo at Moon Under Water) that I really didn’t want to cancel.

I really dislike being off schedule and struggle with it. I came home yesterday in a really bad mood, and decided to take my dog to the beach – it was 8pm by the time I was home- to shake off some of my residual traffic anger.

So that was nice, but I am missing riding and Oats!