Today was a typical day for me. First, there was snow. It’s always snowing. For those of you reading in Washington, if it rained there 2 days ago it’s snowing here now. See what I mean:

Our balcony is relatively protected from the weather. When I looked out this morning it appeared as if the cars had about 4 inches of snow on them.  I got to work and periodically checked on the snow – yep, still snowing.

Two computer, two phones, two handheld devices, a printer – it seems like a ridiculous amount of stuff, but I use all of it. After working all day I headed out to see the horses at 5pm. Oddly, after all that snow my truck had no snow on it. Strange, but hey, saves me the time of clearing off snow. So I head to the barn to ride Blondie.

She says hi. While I’m getting her ready to ride I’m entertained by the ever-present barn kitties. These are two of the younger kitties playing with a manure fork. Actually, they play with manure balls too. I tried to get a picture of that, but was unsuccessful.

So back to getting Blondie ready….I’m riding her 5 days per week and really enjoying it. I think she enjoys all the attention too, but I do feel bad sometimes since she’s somewhere around 16 years old. Look at her muscles, has she changed? I think she’s getting a lot rounder! She looks less like an old style quarter horse now.

(Click for bigger photo.) I’ll get some photos of her under saddle as soon as I can. Now that she’s settled in to the new barn and is no longer frantic, we’re working mainly on establishing rhythm and balance. Lots of trotting! To prevent boredom, I’ve been teaching her to leg yield and I’m starting to throw in more transitions. We really need to work on canter transitions. Going into the canter she still wants to revert into frantic speed demon horse, but I think with a few more weeks of calm riding behind her and more strength/balance this will come together too.

And when we’re done it’s time for a treat.

Then she gets to go back outside with her pony friends. Yep, my little mare’s herd group is two ponies. She’s barely 15 hands so she’s practically a pony herself.

That’s my typical week day.  Well, that and the knitting I do when I get back from the barn, but you see enough of that in my other posts.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 18th, 2008 at 10:07 pm and is filed under Horses. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.