We woke up to a chill drizzle but were determined to get to the barn anyway. Walking into the pasture it was misting lightly, and the horses were all sodden but not uncomfortable. Steen, of course, is largely protected by his blanket. His head and legs were soaked but the rest of him was warm and dry.
Laredo was really, really wet so we let them have some time in the indoor arena to move around and dry off a tad. There was some playing with the ball. Now that Steen sees Laredo play with it so much, he is getting a little more interested, but he doesn’t quite know how to join in. There were some pretty funny moments while they played.
The ride was nice. Steen was really mellow, which surprised me. Usually when he’s wet and chilly he’s on the antsy side, but today he was content to keep things pretty slow. We did do some loping, and worked more on our departures and simple lead changes. I got a couple really nice ones where we came into the trot for a single beat and immediately departed again on the other lead. These felt great, and Steen gets so proud of himself when he knows he nailed something difficult.
They were considerably more dry by the time we put them back out, and the rain had mostly let up. I put Steen in a different blanket and hung his wet one up to dry. Since we have three of them (just in case) but neither Bear nor Laredo has ever needed to wear one, it seemed I might as well get some use out of the spares.
Ride Time: 0:50
Horseback hours YTD: 08:55