April 2014 Ride Calendar

The good news is, we got out and about a little more this month and the work that we did was quality.  Don't remember what accounted for my only riding 3x during the third week, but that's going to happen occasionally and isn't worth sweating.

Then Tuck had eight days chilling in his field while I was in New Orleans and taking care of pre- and post-vacation logistics.  That hurts me a little from the standpoint of wow, it would have been convenient to do our gear finalization last week instead of during the next few days, but honestly the weather was so crappy that I can't bring myself to regret not being here for most of it, and I kind of like the quality work -> horsey holiday -> tune-up and take to ride pattern.

Current plan is dressage school in our other trial saddle tonight.  Crossing my fingers that the forecast for the weekend holds and we can get in a longer hack tomorrow morning, booted all around and riding whatever saddle seems most promising.  10 miles would be adequate; 15 would be ideal.  We have a dressage lesson scheduled for Sunday.  If the Saturday hack is rained out, I'm not above throwing his boots on post-lesson and treating the lesson as a"first loop."  Then rest and light work for the rest of the week leading up to the LD.

One management change early this month; we added a small lunch meal to Tuck's rations.  I thought his body condition was fine leading into April but the grass has been slow to come in this year and I wanted just a hair more reserve on him as we upped the mileage.  The mileage bit didn't really play out, but I figure a few more calories should give him something to work with as we continue Project: Rebuild Topline anyway.

So that's April.  On to May!