I’ve been tired lately. Some of it is the new pup. Some of it is work. And some of it is probably just picking up on Robin’s tiredness from those same two things. We kind of had to force ourselves out to the barn this afternoon. But we were glad we did.
For the past couple of weeks Steen has been coming to meet Robin every we go out to the winter lot. I gotta say, I’ve been a little jealous of this. But last ride (which was Wednesday, and I didn’t blog about it even though it was a good ride), and today Bear came to me from off the bale. He didn’t come to meet me at the gate, but it was still pretty great. I’ll have to make sure we can keep this good thing going.
We rode out on the strip. The sun was bright and warm, but the air was somewhat cool. Both the horses were as tired and lazy as we were. I’m not exactly sure why. It wasn’t that warm.
After a few lengths of walking up and down the strip I noticed Bear was breathing a little hard. Much faster than usual. And he was snorting and kind of coughing, too. I wondered if he had a cold or something. I decided not to push things too much. But as I was talking to Robin about it, she thought it could be from the bales. In the late winter it is common for horses to get a dry cough from sticking their heads in the bale for hours on end. Bear is a champion eater, so there is a good chance this is what he’s got. And sure enough when I looked at the herd they all had their heads stuffed into holes they had eaten into the bale.
We kept things slow and played the mirror game for a while. It was a fun way to pass the time and work on some non-demanding stops and turnarounds. Both the guys did great. After that I thought I’d see what happened if we trotted out for a little bit. He was tired and blowing a little hard, but I think the activity was good for his lungs.
But in between all of that we just did a lot of sitting around. Sometimes it feels so good to just sit on your horse with the sun shining down on you. Bear never minds when we do this, either.