Thursday, October 29, 2009

10/29/09 He Missed Me

I walked briskly to the arena after work, curious how much damage the rainfall had done. Let's face it, it'd rained pretty hard early in the week, and the front ditch still had a puddle in it. Igine my surprise when I found the front 2/3 of the arena dry enough to work.

As I walked back to the barn, I hollered for my big bay superstar. Ransom appeared out from behind trees, and followed me all the way to the gate. "Wait here, buddy. I'll go change, and we'll at least lunge ya."

I got changed, got him caught, got to the trailer. Who the heck am I kidding?! I've had a crappy day at work, and I need some rear-time. I'm riding, and ain't nobody talking me out of it.

I gave Ransom a few minutes free lunging to get the goofies out, and when he quickly settled into a walk taking a huge fit to get him up into trot or canter, I hopped on. It didn't take long moving him around until I realized we weren't going to accomplish my goal for the day.

I simply wanted to work on collected to free walk & back. I knew he was stiff, sore, and generally unhappy he was back to work in the whirling southeast winds. But we walked a while, and I pushed him up to a trot.

"This is going well. I can adjust his stride today. That's awesome. He's not very on the bit, but at least he's not stretched totally out to crap." I couldn't take it. I popped him up into a canter. We rode canter-right a while, adjusting & pushing the strides. How fuN!

Of course, can't just canter the horse one direction, right? So it was canter-left a while, pushed in some sitting trot and rising trot, finally aiming him into a little collection, and a round back with a decent amount of effort.

We danced together for about 45 minutes. I was glad to be back in action, and so was Ransom. He let out a dismal relaxed sigh, with licking & chewing, as I turned loose of him from his halter tonight.

Pretty quickly after we got done, southeast became sharp northwest winds, and the temperatures dropped about twenty degrees. It's just going to get colder overnight, so I rearranged some plans to get Ransom's turnout sheet on him. Again, a dropped head, with a heavy sigh, licking and chewing.

He really missed me.. how cool is that?! G'night ya'll... Maybe more tomorrow, like my FFI's and stuffs.. huh?

1 comment:

Mrs. Mom said...

You two have really been building a great bond there. Glad all your hard work is paying off!! Keep it up- you're both rolling great!!!!