Relax

Life after biostats!

I actually enjoyed the class and material quite a lot and hope to revisit same in the future.  My problem was a perfect storm of optimistic prerequisites that I took literally, thus biting off more than I was prepared to chew in my first mathy class since 2000 and first formal school of any kind since 2005.  It was – bracing!  And meant that basically all of my free time – you remember those oodles of free time I was supposed to have now that I wasn’t driving a 150-mile round trip to the barn 5x/week? – was promptly sucked up into studying.

But now that I’m done and that time is for-real free, I’m getting to indulge in such luxuries as…reading a real book for pleasure instead of just listening to audiobooks in the car!  Taking the dog for a leisurely walk-and-train while the sun is still more or less above the horizon!  Impromptu dinner out with boyfriend instead date night scheduled like a military maneuver several weeks in advance!  I may play a video game some day!

Also, riding my horse.

It has occurred to me that if I want to enter Huntington (haven’t printed the entry yet, but today is opening and I am about 95% to yes), I should probably gesture in the general direction of riding Tuck like an event horse.  You know, do a circle or two, jump a fence.  So far he feels pretty good.  Worked in our last dressage school on being more even in the lateral work and rode the First Level canter tour.  Jumped a little more height on Saturday, to check our comfort level and practice keeping a rhythm out of the corner.  Everything seems to be pretty much where I left it.

(Sub-awesome habits included, but this is my project for this year, and this is why I’ve for-now cut way back on the amount of new information that I’m taking in.  Instead I’m trying to reestablish my feel and my ability to ride, observe, and correct.  So I’m making a certain amount of peace with those sub-awesome habits, and trying to modify them without getting myself all spun up about WHY AM I STILL DOING THAT THING SERIOUSLY WHY.)

And then on Sunday, got up early and headed out for gallop sets.  It was this gorgeous crisp soft-sunlit morning.  We strolled the new-mowed lane, Tucker swinging and stretching, me half-dozing in the saddle – the walk before the trot before the first gallops – and as we traversed the hill I noticed the property-line stake and the red-tailed hawk perching atop it, close enough to touch.

Our gallop set was not as tidy as planned; we did our first on the dirt road up the mountain and then got gloriously lost climbing down the other side, spent some time trotting the single-track, dead-ending into someone’s back yard, and trotting off again.  But finally located the stone wall and followed it down to the dirt road to the causeway and got ourselves back on track.  Communing with the wildlife is one pleasant start to the day.  Flying through the woods, ducking thin whippy branches and jumping whatever’s down in the way, it turns out, is also good!

Went out yesterday to check his back and legs (all comfortably within normal limits).  Didn’t have much time and felt like walking, so we hand-walked twenty minutes up and then twenty back down.  He’ll get today and tomorrow off, then we’ll do a dressage school on Thursday.  Maybe I’ll even put a saddle on him for the occasion? Although let’s not get carried away.  We’re off to UNH on Friday morning for a cross-country school and I’m planning to try for another shakedown-cruise style working hack on Sunday or Monday, with flatting and/or lighter hacking on the other weekend days.  The puts us just about two weeks out from the CTR on the 9th, so we’ll work more lightly until then.

It’s a little weird for me to think about going to a horse trial as an independent just-for-fun thing rather than as part of a season-long campaign.  We’ll have one other opportunity to event this fall if we want it, but that’ll depend on how Huntington goes and how the 25-milers in June and August do and on what I end up wanting to do for the endurance-ride weekend in October, as well as, y’know, what I happen to feel like when opening day rolls around.  I have a preliminary sense, I think, of what I will and won’t be comfortable with, and I figure I’ll know more about how Tuck is handling it all in a couple of weeks.

He feels pretty fantastic right now, though.  So that’s nice.