Friday, February 12

Today I am grateful for:

Slightly less horrifyingly cold temperatures. Sunshine.

I finally felt like it was possible to go see River today/evening. It was only -20C compared to the -30C or colder we've had this past week. I didn't go see him at all this past week, because there would have been no point trying to work with him when it was -30C, and it's not safe to travel if I don't HAVE to, so I stayed home.

One thing I realized, is that I feel okay with R looking after River at the barn. She was texting me with updates, letting me know when she brought him in and fed him his extra feed how he's doing. She put his heaviest blankets on, and was also taking them off when he came in the barn to give him a break. She's being very conscientious with him, so I didn't feel like I had to drive there myself to check on him this week; I could focus on taking care of things here at home. At the previous barn, I would have been driving there every day in weather like this to feed River extra feed myself since the barn owner didn't offer that service, and even making sure he had water (their automatic waterers often froze, and didn't always get found right away) and so on.

I had a good session with River. There were a bunch of obstacles out for people to practice with, such as tarps and poles and barrels, so we did those as part of our ground work. He did well on the flexing laterally at the poll in the halter. I did ride him, and that was nice for both of us, I think. He does this thing where he makes happy groans when we do our stretching work under saddle, and you know it likely feels good to move around and use his back and warm up all the way through. I was careful not to get him too warm, since he has to go right back out into the cold (even though he has winter blankets).

We had a quiet evening at home. We watched a movie, and my sweetie went into the basement and used his bike trainer for a while.