Back on Track

I did it! I decided I'd go ahead and take a chance and just start riding Ben again even though he's not 100% healed. He's still got an area about the size of a quarter that I'm waiting on. But with a scab protecting it, I figured it would be okay to work him a little. I really just wanted to find out if he's lame or not anymore. Since I don't have an adequate area to lunge him at my parents house, I walked him down to Barnabee to use their arena.

Had it not been for the 1.5 mile long walk (each way) down the road, I'd say today went perfectly. Ben was such a spaz on the road! Granted about 10 garbage trucks, 2 cement mixers and 2 other big rigs passed us along the way, so Ben wasn't too thrilled. My parents live on a road that all the garbage and recycling trucks take on their way to the dump, so we are used to seeing them, but today it seemed excessive and Ben was super sensitive about them. The whole walk there and back I just kept telling him in a calm voice, "Easy boy. Walk. It's okay." Luckily he didn't jump out in the road at all, but he came pretty close to it a couple of times.

It's times like this that I wish I had an extra $425/month so I could just board him at Barnabee. It would make my life so much easier and save so much time. Either that, or just be already living on my own property and have my own riding facilities to use. Ahhhhh....someday....right?!

While at Barnabee I lunged Ben for about 10 minutes at the trot and canter. He didn't appear to be lame so then I got on him and did some simple exercises at the walk for another 10 minutes. I would have worked him longer, but when I arrived Jamie was already riding Ivan in the arena and I didn't want to disturb her with my hyper horse. Then Rebecca and Joan came in with their horses, so I had to stop lungeing. With the 4 of us riding, even though 2 of us were at the walk, it got pretty tricky so I just opted to call it good and leave.

Two riders work well in an arena together, but any more than that is hard unless you are in a group lesson and all working on the same exercises. In college we would have lessons up to 6-8 students at a time, but it always worked well since the instructor was in charge "directing traffic." Those were the days! Ha! I'm so grateful for private lessons now. Hopefully I'll be able to get Ben back on track with his training, so we can start up lessons again soon.