Cob Jockey: Rolling With It

January 11, 2015

Rolling With It

Some days, you head out to the barn, because it's 21 degrees and that qualifies as a heat wave.

Marshmallow pony, wearing a 300g liner, a 100g liner, a 100g neck and his sheet, agrees. I mean, 21 is nearly 30 degrees warmer than it was on Tuesday when it was -6F!

And then you get out to the barn to find out that they have way more snow than you do at home, and the outdoor is frozen:

Not too surprised by this, in retrospect.

And the indoor is frozen shut. In fact, almost every single door that slides here is either frozen open or frozen shut.

Pretty, but totally useless.

And you're already tacked up and holding your horse at the frozen door of the indoor when you find out it won't open, and you haven't ridden in a week, so you decide to go for a bareback hack, in a quarter sheet, in the open field, by yourselves, with a pony that feels exceptionally frisky since he's finally not wearing 50lbs of clothing for once this week and it's cold and it's windy, and you think maybe you've had better ideas in your life but dammit you're going to ride.

My goals went from "Working on shoulder in to haunches in transitions and an active engaged hindquarter because we need to keep practicing because show season is just a couple of months away," to "If he ever walks calmly around this field, we're calling today a success."

Mother Nature calls the shots for us this time of year, in terms of training, and you can either roll with it and not get too worked up, or get overwhelmed thinking about how far behind you are. I choose option A.

Horton hears a who.

Eventually, many minutes later, his ears stopped doing the "full alert swivel" and relaxed into this, even though he was still marching:

It was a good ride for us mentally, even if it was completely unproductive, and I'm hoping for one more before the barn is supposed to get hit with 0.2-0.3" of ice tonight. Home isn't supposed to get nearly that much. Figures, the day I put in a heated water bucket because his rubber one is finally freezing solid, they'll lose power.

Having a heated room in the barn is SO NICE.

My poor trainer canceled my lesson this week, saying "We just need to survive this week, we'll make it up maybe next week." Frozen doors, frozen buckets, frozen spigots and frozen people. I feel so bad for them, since I have been through that too. I pay a lot for full board, but weeks like this, I know it is nowhere close to what they deserve.