Tuesday, April 18
Apr. 19th, 2023 01:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gottawonderToday I am grateful for:
Beautiful weather. The snow is almost gone now.
I wanted to have a phone conversation with my Sister E, but she was at physio, so I talked with her husband. I think I talk with him more than I talk with my sister now! He's home more.
I probably talked too much about my concerns about Trainwreck, which I do too often in general, seeing as how there is no solution. We also talked about a brother of his who is now deceased, and a bit more about his feelings about moving to town, and how people seem to stray into bad company at a young point in life, and it can alter your whole potential as time goes by, because you'll just get stuck being surrounded by the same kind of people.
I hope I'm not burning him out because I end up talking with him so much. I'm really surprised at how much we talk now, when we never really did most of my life (he's been married to my sister for forty-ish years now, most of my aware life time).
Then I went to see River.
I actually saw L, R's daughter outside at the barn. I haven't seen her since Christmas, and I was sincerely starting to wonder if she was under house arrest or something. She LIVES THERE, and I barely see her anymore. It seems like she isn't riding that much anymore, or maybe she just hates riding in winter. Seems like a missed opportunity to live on your parent's farm with nice horses and a place to ride indoors, and not bother. Oh well. That's teenagers for you.
We had a nice chat.
I met the women who run Parson's horse rescue (R fosters one of their horses, Phoenix. I've mentioned him.). It was my first time meeting them, and they seem like very nice people. They were quite enamored with River, who does look pretty dashing when he's clean because he's very nearly all white (grey for horsey folks).
I worked with him in the arena for a while, just long enough to practice the current pattern. I asked for the turn on the haunches to the right, and he did it very well today. Who knows what changed, alignment of the moons? Maybe his leg is feeling better? Since he did it well, he got to be DONE. See? How hard was that.
Then I wanted to ride outside finally. It's been nice enough temperature wise for a while now, but there was still a fair amount of hardened snow up until recently, which makes for bad footing.
So I took him out to the pasture that is often used for obstacles in the summer, since there weren't any horses in it at the moment. I rode with just the neck rope bareback, and I was surprised at how natural and normal it feels now. He was very relaxed, and mostly we moseyed around since that pasture is too lumpy to be good for trotting or cantering.
We still did practice our turns on the haunches, which were good, and at picking points in the pasture and walking in straight lines to them so it was me setting goals, not just meandering.
It was a nice change of pace and I deeply enjoyed it. I think he did too.
We also spent a fair amount of time on finding all of his itchy spots and taking care of those.
I came home and had a bath, and a nap.
I learned about a cool island, that to me almost seems like it is surrounded by a river, not really a lake, but they call it a lake. From the air it almost looks like a moat.
This kind of lake is called an annular lake, and is caused by a meteor impact.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9-Levasseur_Island
Beautiful weather. The snow is almost gone now.
I wanted to have a phone conversation with my Sister E, but she was at physio, so I talked with her husband. I think I talk with him more than I talk with my sister now! He's home more.
I probably talked too much about my concerns about Trainwreck, which I do too often in general, seeing as how there is no solution. We also talked about a brother of his who is now deceased, and a bit more about his feelings about moving to town, and how people seem to stray into bad company at a young point in life, and it can alter your whole potential as time goes by, because you'll just get stuck being surrounded by the same kind of people.
I hope I'm not burning him out because I end up talking with him so much. I'm really surprised at how much we talk now, when we never really did most of my life (he's been married to my sister for forty-ish years now, most of my aware life time).
Then I went to see River.
I actually saw L, R's daughter outside at the barn. I haven't seen her since Christmas, and I was sincerely starting to wonder if she was under house arrest or something. She LIVES THERE, and I barely see her anymore. It seems like she isn't riding that much anymore, or maybe she just hates riding in winter. Seems like a missed opportunity to live on your parent's farm with nice horses and a place to ride indoors, and not bother. Oh well. That's teenagers for you.
We had a nice chat.
I met the women who run Parson's horse rescue (R fosters one of their horses, Phoenix. I've mentioned him.). It was my first time meeting them, and they seem like very nice people. They were quite enamored with River, who does look pretty dashing when he's clean because he's very nearly all white (grey for horsey folks).
I worked with him in the arena for a while, just long enough to practice the current pattern. I asked for the turn on the haunches to the right, and he did it very well today. Who knows what changed, alignment of the moons? Maybe his leg is feeling better? Since he did it well, he got to be DONE. See? How hard was that.
Then I wanted to ride outside finally. It's been nice enough temperature wise for a while now, but there was still a fair amount of hardened snow up until recently, which makes for bad footing.
So I took him out to the pasture that is often used for obstacles in the summer, since there weren't any horses in it at the moment. I rode with just the neck rope bareback, and I was surprised at how natural and normal it feels now. He was very relaxed, and mostly we moseyed around since that pasture is too lumpy to be good for trotting or cantering.
We still did practice our turns on the haunches, which were good, and at picking points in the pasture and walking in straight lines to them so it was me setting goals, not just meandering.
It was a nice change of pace and I deeply enjoyed it. I think he did too.
We also spent a fair amount of time on finding all of his itchy spots and taking care of those.
I came home and had a bath, and a nap.
I learned about a cool island, that to me almost seems like it is surrounded by a river, not really a lake, but they call it a lake. From the air it almost looks like a moat.
This kind of lake is called an annular lake, and is caused by a meteor impact.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9-Levasseur_Island
