Hay Day

But Not Next Door

I guess my hay guy next door took Good Friday off.

So, I headed out to my regular dealer with my little trailer. Found out we can get 21-22 bales in it right now as long as the top ones are tied down. I bought 15 bales of the good green stuff and 7 bales from a fresh load of mixed. That will hold us for a while and early next week I will drive over to the sandpit next door and get a small load of his hay.

I kind of screwed up because I had made a chiropractor's appointment for the morning too, and managed to miss it. That was actually OK, because I was able to reschedule for the afternoon--after I'd unloaded and stacked the 21 bales. Better than getting adjusted and then unloading the hay.

I then sat down and managed to put all my papers together for my income tax and took that over to my accountant. They apparently did my returns in short order as I can pick them up tomorrow. Hopefully I will be getting enough of a refund to pay most of my summer bills.

The Boys were quite happy that I'd gotten the new load of hay because that forced me to clean out all the miscellaneous flakes and partial bales in the storage area. Needless to say, I gave it all to them to eat.

Why is is that if you have three horses and put out three piles of hay, they have to chase each other away and play musical hay piles? Since Chance is low man on the totem pole, I finally put out a fourth pile and soon everyone seemed to settle down a bit.

Made the mistake of stopping at Kohl's on the way home from the chiropractor. Of course, I ended up buying an Easter outfit. 'Nough said.

I decided since I'd just been adjusted I'd lunge everyone instead of riding. Chance was up first and he was practically perfect!! I'd set up a line of low cavaletti poles at a long trot stride distance. After I walked him over them and did the basic walk/trot/canter on the circle, I set him at the grid. He was wonderful! Lovely, steady, quiet, and marvelous about judging the distance and lengthening his stride to trot over all four poles. Had he ever done this before??? If not, he was amazing.

Toby actually seemed to want some attention and was, as ever, a master on the lunge. It is such a pleasure to work a horse so well trained. (Actually, I trained him, but that doesn't matter.) He did the cavaletti beautifully. What else would I have expected?

Tucker who had tried to ignore me earlier finally decided he wanted to be the center of attention. His lunging session was good too, and he didn't do any of his inexplicable cross cantering, which was nice. Then we tackled the cavaletti. The right rein was fine, but on the left, the better side for me, he decided to start playing games. He'd speed up after doing the poles to get enough ahead of me to he could dive to the inside and miss the poles the next time around. I finally gave him a sharp correction after which he did two good trips and then began tripping over at least one part of the grid. Once more, I corrected him, and he finally decided it was better to do it right than fuss around and finished on a good note.

In his defense, sometimes I just think he forgets where his feet are going. He is an awfully big boy, and every once in a while I suspect the brain does not connect all the way to the legs. When Toby was younger he was a bit like that. His mind would wander and he'd do something like walk into a tree.

One will hope that age will make the Tuck wiser.

Enough physical effort today to wear out my body...or at least my knees.

I'm tired.