Tucker's Turn

Beautiful Day

Despite a forecast for rain, the day turned out to be lovely. It was nearly a match to last Sunday at the pace.

I had church/choir in the morning and then needed to go back to Tractor Supply to get the bran I'd forgotten to buy yesterday. Since my church is partway there, it was a shorter drive out.

On the way back I stopped at the market to get some eggs, orange juice, and sausages since I had depleted my breakfast supply.  The store had a sign out front, "Flu Shots."  I'd waited too long last year and had a hard time finding some place that still had the vaccine, so I decided to take care of that today as well.  The nice young pharmacist injected me and after I sat for a few minutes to make sure I was not going to have an adverse reaction, I headed back home.

I planned on riding Tucker in the arena, but had to do some work first. There was a fence post down and the arena needed be poo picked.   Fortunately, the post was not broken, but just pulled out. I'm not too sure how that happened, but I did need to dig a new hole and reset the post. I did have a bit of "help" from the Boys if you consider sticking a horse nose into the hole "help."  Or tipping the wheelbarrow over, "help." Or getting in the way as I tried to put the fence boards back in place, "help."

After I finished the fence, I spent another half hour or so poo picking.

Then, at last, I saddled Tucker up for a ride.

We had a good session with just a couple of "almost explosions."  The first came when I decided to give him a kick to get him to trot on since he was really behind my leg.  He resented that one big time and threatened a buck.  My trainer always used to say, "Kick him!" when we had forward issues. Clearly Tucker does not take well to kick.

The second little mini almost meltdown came when my adorable barn kitty, Peppercorn, decided to gallop across in front of us in one of those mad kitty dashes.  Tucker focused on the cat instead of me and tried to join him for a stride or two.

Otherwise, aside from my not demanding too much because he is not in shape for really serious work, we managed to do some walk, trot, and canter exercises for about a half hour.  I finished with canter figure eights, trotting the change of lead in the middle.

Two goals there. One to get him more responsive to my leg, and the second, to prepare for the flying changes somewhere down the line.

Once again, it was a good day at Follywoods. Nothing spectacular, but things accomplished.

Looking forward to this autumn weather.