The Outside of a Horse

What a strange, strange week it's been.

I was in Las Vegas last weekend for a family wedding and found out about the marathon bombings during a stopover in Kansas City.  The internet is so weird and so wonderful -- the first thing I saw was an email from a friend in the UK asking if I was all right.  Because our flight was headed back home to Boston, of course.

I now live north of the city, but was halfway to work in Cambridge when the lockdown was expanded.  Turned around and went home.  I felt ridiculous, but what can you do?

You can go get on a horse.  Which I did a few hours later, and ended up hacking out with a friend, and felt so much the better for it.

Tuck has been in fine form this weekend.  Long hack on Friday, jump school on Saturday, another long hack this morning with a few cross-country questions tacked onto the end.  He's felt very bright and chipper all three days, very happy to be out and about and working.

He makes me a little crazy, that horse.  I've been trying to monitor the state of his back without obsessing, which is easier said than done to begin with, and it doesn't help that he doesn't always react to work in the way that I expect.  The harder he works, the better he seems to like it.  If I leave the barn worried that I've overdone it, it's almost certain that the next day he will feel great.  Whereas if I try to give him a light and easy ride, that can be a recipe for one cranky pony.  I feel like there's a lesson here, but apparently it's one that I'll have to learn a few more times yet before it will stick...

But yes, trying to maintain perspective re: his back.  I hate that he's ever even a little bit sore.  But even on the days when it seems during the pre-ride grooming that we may have a problem, he always seems perfect after work.  The change to living on the side of a hill is a big one and a certain amount of muscle-building makes sense.  And he is going pretty well.  Not perfect from the first step of every ride, but within normal limits -- and once warmed up, I'm happy with the work.  So I'm watching, mostly, and planning to tinker with our warm-up -- get back in the habit of hacking beforehand, which has always worked well for him, or maybe a short longe to start those muscles moving before I hop on -- and see how he progresses for the rest of the month.  If I'm still feeling fussy about it in May, we will take a closer look.

In meantime, life is good.  New barn is the first I've boarded at where the care is genuinely excellent (versus adequate) and the peace-of-mind difference is a revelation.  Also I ended up at the barn twice yesterday (jump school with barnmate in the morning, back to meet vet for second round of spring shots in the afternoon) and still drove less than I was driving previously to access old barn.  I love driving and I love my car, but seriously.

Happy to jump again!  We worked our way down a grid and then just played a little with the singles and related distances we'd also set up.  Tuck was super; I was rusty; we stuck close to Novice height and there were unpretty moments.  But also some fences that felt fantastic -- we finished up with a square skinny plank oxer that just worked -- and it was so, so nice to be sitting on the real Tucker again.  He was a little overbold, a little cocky, but that's a ride that I enjoy, just like he seems to enjoy solving a tricksy question and/or fixing it when I get us in wrong.  And it feels right to have the space, for now, to jump on our own and get ourselves sorted back out.

Today we headed down to trot a couple of laps around the park -- a flatter, more uniform surface than the trails on our side of the road -- ended up motoring around for a thirty-minute stretch (with a few brief breaks as we passed dog-walkers and kite-flyers) before heading back up the mountain to walk the downhills and trappy bits, trot where I felt we could.  We were out two hours in total, with plenty of horse left on return home.  Hurrah.

Started out as kind of a freaky weekend, ended up a very good one, at least from a riding perspective.  Sure beats the other way around.