Sunday

My English lesson went pretty well on Thursday. The outdoor was too we so we had to ride in the indoor and it was like a sauna in there. I hadn't eaten much for dinner so it was a hard lesson. There was a point I slowed down to a jog because I thought I might pass out! I rode with the slow-twist snaffle and a training fork. Suddenly at the end of the lesson I figured out how to get him to lift his shoulders and drop at the poll. I decided to keep that going and rode the same way on Friday and Saturday. Saturday I even dropped the training fork and he still did really well. I am strongly leaning towards showing English at the September show, but we'll see.

Today I went out and turned Jr. and Max out in the mud lot since the front fields are still to muddy. Shoe-pulling mud. There was no manure wagon so I didn't clean my stall. Instead I cleaned and bleached my buckets, Max's buckets and Mighty's buckets. Noone else was at the barn and the weather was so nice and cool that I took my chair out of my trunk, set it up next to the field and read my book for a while. (Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Titan's Curse) It was a really nice way to spend an hour. Twizzler, one of the barn cats, jumped into my lap so it was even more enjoyable! I really didn't get much reading done as I kept looking up at the horses and Twiz kept demanding I pet her.

Once Max's girls got there we took the boys in and we rode. The kids wanted to ride in the indoor so I rode with them instead of going out to the outdoor alone. It was a decent ride. After three days of letting him canter at a normal speed it was tougher to get him to slow down to a lope. I have a western lesson tomorrow so I should get some time with KAT to help me with that.

The view from my chair: