fallait bien commencer un jour!
There's a first time for everything. I fell off Red today! I was coming towards a jump and he stopped in front of it. No problem there. But then he changed his mind and jumped! I was thrown forward on the saddle, I lost my stirrups, and started sliding on his neck. I thought I could recover when he noticed I was somewhere I wasn't supposed to be, and he just shook me off his neck. I fell on my back and couldn't breathe for a few seconds. But Red is nice and didn't go anywhere after I was on the ground. I'm sure he was just as surprised as I was. Then I got back on, and walked a lap or two. After which I proceeded to jumping again. I'm glad Cat was there, or I may not have wanted to jump again. The jump didn't go too well at first because I had obviously lost some confidence, but the last run of the whole course went fine. Phew! I'll be alright, I guess.
Today really wasn't the best of days to go to the barn. First, Red broke his stall door. So he was in a stall that was just plain filthy. I had never seen that before. I clean it thoroughly to realize that there's no clean bedding available anymore. Instead I took some of the bedding that was in his original stall (I had cleaned it yesterday, so it was clean compared with the filth in the new stall). The new stall is also the farthest away from where you dump the dirty bedding and from the tack room. Then I go to the ring. There, there's a small enclosure in the back but the fence was all twisted and in pieces. I guess some horses knocked it down. Red was a bit scared and it took some effort to make him walk close to it. When the lesson was done, I wanted to put him back in his temporary stall, but a horse was in there! I had spent an hour cleaning it just so another horse could use it. I proceeded to put Red where I was told to, which was another dirty stall. But no time to clean that one. As I was leaving, his stall was being repaired, so hopefully tomorrow everything will be back to normal. I hope there'll be fresh bedding because I took two wheelbarrows worth of his bedding to put it in the other stall.
But I need to mention that cleaning a stall before riding is great because you get all warmed-up, which leads to fewer chances of injury if you fall off the horse :-)
A couple more things to add to that not-so-great trip to the barn: I'd forgotten my watch for the first time, and for some reason, they put gravel on the road I take to go from the barn to Josh's work place. I usually drive at 60 mph on that country road, but couldn't go over 40 this time because if the gravel. Blah!
Here comes mommy bird! Tweet tweet!
Today really wasn't the best of days to go to the barn. First, Red broke his stall door. So he was in a stall that was just plain filthy. I had never seen that before. I clean it thoroughly to realize that there's no clean bedding available anymore. Instead I took some of the bedding that was in his original stall (I had cleaned it yesterday, so it was clean compared with the filth in the new stall). The new stall is also the farthest away from where you dump the dirty bedding and from the tack room. Then I go to the ring. There, there's a small enclosure in the back but the fence was all twisted and in pieces. I guess some horses knocked it down. Red was a bit scared and it took some effort to make him walk close to it. When the lesson was done, I wanted to put him back in his temporary stall, but a horse was in there! I had spent an hour cleaning it just so another horse could use it. I proceeded to put Red where I was told to, which was another dirty stall. But no time to clean that one. As I was leaving, his stall was being repaired, so hopefully tomorrow everything will be back to normal. I hope there'll be fresh bedding because I took two wheelbarrows worth of his bedding to put it in the other stall.
But I need to mention that cleaning a stall before riding is great because you get all warmed-up, which leads to fewer chances of injury if you fall off the horse :-)
A couple more things to add to that not-so-great trip to the barn: I'd forgotten my watch for the first time, and for some reason, they put gravel on the road I take to go from the barn to Josh's work place. I usually drive at 60 mph on that country road, but couldn't go over 40 this time because if the gravel. Blah!
Here comes mommy bird! Tweet tweet!