Beautiful Day!!

Some Days Just Work Out Fine

The weather was gorgeous!! Sunny, dry, "coolish," and breezy.  And, as it turned out, relatively "bugless!!"

I went for a nice swim after school, doing my laps with ease and a little more speed as my fitness has increased.

I got home, fed the Boys, did a little computer stuff while they digested and then headed back out.

This time I saddled up Tucker.  I have not ridden him in over a month, if I take into account all the days he was lame and then the week of dreadful heat.

May I say, with considerable pleasure, that my Boy is trained?  Well not upper level dressage trained, but certainly trained to the point where I can just hop on after such a long layoff and he is just fine to ride.

I started off letting him go in a long frame, not asking for much except some forward trot. I did not feel any lame steps and I kept the trotting up for about ten minutes.  Then, I asked for canter, and he rolled right into it. This, now, was a bit of a surprise as he had been protesting the canter aid before.  I did not canter long, as I know he is not more than lungeing fit, but both leads were good and he didn't seem unhappy about either.

Once, when I slid my leg back a little too much he swished his tail and started threatening "something," but once I put my leg where it belonged, he was fine. I'll have to sort that out with some haunches in as we go along, but I'm not too worried about it for now. As his conditioning improves, I'll think about the possible hock injections, but there's no rush.  I am not competing and as long as he feels comfortable, I'd rather wait.

After I finished up with Tucker, I decided to give my own out of riding shape body a break, and lunged Chance instead of riding him. Lots of canter/trot/canter transitions energized him.  He has a nice trot, hinting of some suspension.  Strangely, he kept taking the right lead canter, even on the left rein--quite contrary to his normal response.  He did have his flysheet on and I began to wonder if perhaps the hind leg straps were causing an issue.  I finally loosened them and he gave me the lead right off, so that might have been the problem.

Either way, out little lungeing session was a good one with the Boy getting a nice little workout.

Toby clearly did not want to get caught, so I left him again.  He is retired, after all.  Why work??

Uhm....I'm retired too....why work?

Gotta go...off to work....*lol*