Finally
The forecast called for rain into yesterday afternoon. I was still raining at 1:30 AM.
The sun was out by sunrise.
Fortunately since my land is on a bit of a hill and above a very absorbant aquifer, things dry out quickly. My ring wasn't perfect, but it was good enough to ride in by the afternoon.
I took Toby out on the trail to seen just how much flooding there was in the park. It's been an ongoing controversy in my Township because the warehouse development to the east has been flooding land in our State Park for nearly three years. I have been battling to protec the area for about that long. Now, however, a new warehouse complex has built huge infiltration basins to hold the stormwater runoff and the 4 1/2 million gallons of runoff are no longer going into the parkland. I ride out after every big rain to see how things are progressing. I guess Toby's getting used to the chore as he seemed to be having a good time.
I worked Tucker in the ring. We are working towards the second level tests. The big change is the simple change of lead--canter, walk, canter. Tuck always wants to fall on his forehand into the trot instead of working off his back end. He is certainly strong enough to do it well, just lazy and looking for the easy way out. I had some fairly nice transitions on the left rein pretty quickly as he carries himself with better balance on the left. The right was definitely more difficult. I made a few overly strong corrections to keep him up on the downward and he didn't like that much. I felt bad about it, but he wasn't responding to the lighter aids.
He is an opinionated fellow with a strong sense of justice. I apologized to him for being too strong. I know it sound silly, but I always get the sense he is offended if I overcorrect him. In the end we managed two pretty nice canter/walk/canter changes on the right so I stopped, took him back to the barn and gave him a nice fat carrot.
I rode Chance for about 10 minutes again. It's amazing how quickly he is progressing. Three trot circles this time in each direction. I do have to do some give to the bit work, though. I find it very disconcerting to have his head way up in the air when I am riding him. Still, I never feel as if he is going to do anything dangerous.
It's just me and my "control freak" personality. *G*
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
and are the basins working?
ReplyDeletethere's been a lot of controversy over here about developers building stuff on flood plains and also about too much concrete generally, e.g. people concreting their front gardens as parking, so the water has nowhere to go except the storm drains which weren't built for it, and then you end up with houses that shouldn't get floods, flooded ....
The new basins are working now. However, I'm not sure all the construction is completed, so I don't know what the final results will be.
ReplyDeleteThere are many regulations about building in flood plains here in New Jersey. But some of this construction made presumptions about where water was going that were entirely wrong. The plans were approved without the proper investigation.
Stormwater management is a big issue. It needs to be dealt with carefully and intelligently. Sounds as if you are having the same kinds of concerns. Yuck.