Warm Winter Weather

Which was coincidentally placed perfectly on a weekend leads to wonderous riding! Griffin even volunteered to leave his girlfriend to come play with us!

Griffin's girlfrann, Mocha, working in our brand new outdoor round pen.

A quick-learner, relaxing and not moving her feet when provided the opportunity.

I ponied Griffin on Saturday with Q and I on an 8 mile ride. Both horses were eager beavers the whole damn way. Griffin started it though. Oh, he totally started it. And then Q decided she couldn't be left out of the fun and to hell with her little counter-part, she was boss and was faster and had to try to be in front at all times.

While I swore up and down to myself that we would do no cantering while we went out on this first ponying jaunt because that would be crazy...well, we cantered. Not a lot. And I didn't love it or let it last for long, but those damn eager beavers just rushed into it! Q was chomping on the bit the whole. damn. ride. I have NEVER seen her SO peppy. We could have done 30 miles easily with her attitude Saturday! Griffin kept stride for everything. And no, he would have hated 30 miles, haha.

Surprisingly on a semi-loose rein; this was at the final ½-mile of the ride

Griffin was done-done-done

Exhausted little champ post-ride

Miss Zoomy Kahbloomy herself post-ride (Please excuse all random farm equipment randomly placed out of snow-harm
in all photos above and here.)

Griffin was a total champ the whole time. The final two cool-down miles he really started to drag. Bless his little heart, when we got into the woods to weave around the Frankenstorm damage to head down to the barn, I watched over my shoulder as he let branches smack him full in the face without dodging them because he was so tired. He just closed his eyes and took it like a man. Sweet, sweet boy. I did my best to weave us around the worst of it, but its pretty hairy in the woods still. I've got a lot of trail clearing work to do sadly.

: : : : :

Today I went on another 10 mile ride on Q. We took it a lot easier than the day prior. She was still spazzy over some silly things, but overall she had her head screwed on pretty well. In hindsight, she was very well behaved all things considered. We walked a lot, trotted a lot, and cantered a little. She was on a loose rein the entire ride. A big change from the day prior. Good pony!

She would get all ears-pricked-full-on-caution-alert at so many random things though. She didn't spook at TOO many things, but she'd get freaked over things. I started sing-songy narrating everything that she was bothered by: "Bridge. Cardboard. Mailbox. Aquarium. Flag. Dark spot on ground. Rock. Log. Branch. Leaf. Barn that's always been there." It went on and on. I was amused with myself. I'm sure if she'd had a hand she would have bopped me one. But fer realz, brah, totez awesome ride. (There you go, California (&& Mandy!), that sentence was for you.)

Q loves her post-ride grain

A great weekend in the unseasonably warm weather. Back to cold this week (yay!). I work 36 hours in my 'real' job and 39 hours on the mountain this week. Fortunately, Monday is a Federal holiday and I don't work the resort, so I will have one day off before heading back into the office for another 35 hours of work. I worked 14 days straight last two weeks. Okay, so not quite because I ended up getting sick from running myself into the ground from working 134 hours in a two week period. Excessive? Eh, probably. Fun? Oh, hell yes.