On being sick, and a trip to see Darcy.
I've been sick over the past week. It was strange how it started --- a little sore throat after my first barn meeting after work on Sunday. By Monday morning I was a wreck. Paul was a sweetheart and ran to the store to buy me lemon-ginger-echinecia juice, popsicles, and an assorted box of remedy teas. I missed class that morning, but I managed to carpool to Redmond with Paul so I could make it to therapy. My weekly reminder that I'm not crazy is absolutely essential to my sanity, as strange as that may sound.
Yesterday was the worst of all. My breathing sounded like a kid having an asthma attack, and I could hardly hear The Biggest Loser on hulu.com over my coughing fits. Eventually around 3pm I called Paul, crying, and begged him to come home. ... Then the strangest thing happened... he came home. This absoutely blew my mind. Sure, when we were still dating he'd do anything for me. But these days his job always takes priority --- espcially with concerns that he could lose it.
It was supposed to be a work-day for Darcy so Paul drove me out to the barn and I lunged him. I hadn't yet lunged Darcy in the new arena, they ok'd us letting him loose in there after he was dropped off on Saturday, and I'd already ridden him three times, but I hadn't needed to lunge him yet.
All I had was my long Parelli rope, since my lunge line is still at Equinox with Traveler and his leasee, John. So I decided to not tack him up with the neck stretcher, and lunge him naked with a halter instead. This proved to be a mistake since he ran around in a way the Parelli's would call a "Bad Banana." ZOMG Thier majical rope didn't work!
Paul brought his SLR to play with and got quite a few decent shots.
I love his body clip this year.
What's on the end of the rope? A tiger perhaps?
Darce was being sloppy with his canter transitions to the left so I asked Paul to hand me the lunge whip I'd seen just outside the arena. It wasn't until I was finished with it that I realized it was a Clinton Anderson "carrot stick." Well, it did the job.
Darcy was having trouble chilling out and maintaining the gait and pace I was asking for so I decided he needed a little mid-workout pep talk.
These things tend to work well with Darcy and he was much more relaxed the rest of the night. He gave me a nice left lead canter transition -- my goal for the night, and we were able to call it quits.
There is a horse that lives in a pen next to the arena, which is very concerining to Darcy. Paul would like to point out how well the trees turned out in the background.
FIN
Please excuse any spelling errors or otherwise. Like always I'm sitting on the couch with the TV as my monitor and my eyesight is not as good as it once was.