Making the most of the time you have

Scheduling lately has been very problematic - hence the slow blog posts - but I have been really proud of how I have been able to consistently ride Fawkes 3-4 times a week even with other things going crazy.

This past weekend it was a wedding 3+ hours away with an overnight, so I shifted my riding lesson to early Saturday morning (I love love love my trainer and how she works with my schedule) and then we packed the dogs up and headed to the wedding.  They decided to get married in a pretty remote location which required camping.  In theory, this is fine.  But it ended up raining and we had the dogs.  Two muddy dogs in a rainy campsite does not equal happy humans.  Everything is disgusting and I think we are going to just get the car detailed.

Maya is not the clean sort

But anyways, I managed to get a hack in Thursday night, a lesson in Saturday morning and another hack in tonight.  Fawkes has been very, very well behaved.  There isn't much to say about the hacks, except lots of canter transitions, moving off the leg, and focusing on outside aids.

Saturday's lesson was more equitation torture.  I am becoming some sort of sick creature who loves this stuff.  Then we just kept it low and easy over fences.  Two lines where we alternated between 5 and 6 strides to work on rateability and confidence.  He was great, we are getting our groove back.

Recycled photo because I am out of new ones.  Love the front splits.

Saddle situation has gone nowhere.  I have a used Prestige Red Fox saddle coming in on trial from somewhere in Washington state since clearly nothing local is working.  I ordered it Thursday and I think it might actually be coming by Amish cart horse because it isn't scheduled to be delivered until Wednesday night.  Then I get 5 frantic days to see if it will work for us.  This trial process is expensive so I am only doing one at a time, if this one doesn't work I have my eye on a couple more and I might drive the very far distance to another tack shop that swears they have saddles that would work for me.  I have fallen for that before but hey, road trip and a tack shop?  How can I lose?