Happy Valentine’s Day weekend

A very laid-back weekend, which was fine by me but a bit tame, nonetheless…

Each Valentine’s Day, I like to curate vintage cards. This year is a hotdog theme.

Saturday I shared the arena with a lesson, and Oats was very cute. He was breaking into trot from the canter (argh!) but I kind of blame my inconsistent riding for that. We cruised over an x-rail the lesson was working over and he was lovely over it…Though his penchant for taking flyers definitely came back with it, he just can’t take them seriously!

Went for a run (wanted to do a long run but it was pouring rain, gaag) just over 9.7km after riding and yeah, it was…special. So special.

We wrapped up the day by preparing dinner for my friend who experienced a horrible tradgedy, and brought it to her house. It felt nice to do a good deed, and she’s going through a really, really difficult time right now, so I hope when she is able, we can spend some time together.

Sunday (Valentine’s day!), headed off to the barn again and did a fairly tough dressage school with Oats. He got very sweaty! He was somewhat compliant, though I think he kept looking at the very inviting little mini jumps set up and thinking…why aren’t we just doing those instead??

Finished the day by running some hills, feeling like I was going to puke the whole time. ARGH! Remind me to never eat that much rice noodle stirfry with chilis and then run…Too much. Way too much. God..my stomach was messed up the whole night from that barf-inducing experience.

We wrapped up V-day by getting two lobsters and a sack of clams, and a bottle of Prosecco. My husband even surprised me with a box of ginger chocolate Purdy’s to finish it off! Yum!

A good stretch

Oats, since a few pretty bad rides a little while ago, has been on a good behaviour stretch. Our dressage is progressing with minor hissy-fits, our lateral work is improving and the improvement is actually noticeable?!

Yesterday, my birthday, we had a dressage lesson that started fairly heavy on the technical- with walk- quick trot step transitions, to some mild lateral work with haunches out and haunches in. Oats was okay for this, some minor fussing and balkiness but nothing compared to his attitude in the winter.

He did desperately want to ‘stretch’ out his head and neck though, and yanked the reins quite hard a few times! Karen says this is ok, as he is just looking to get some freedom for his head and neck and he’s actually starting to work through his back a bit more.

We then went the opposite way of the technical work and let them do big stretchy trots, allowing them to really reach down and we did this both in the canter and the trot. Overall, it felt really nice and I was quite pleased with the effort Oats was giving me.

Ended my birthday day with a nice dinner and cake prepared by my husband and a few glasses of Prosecco. Good to be alive!