Celebrating 4 years

Four years ago today Carmen came home.

 2015 was the year of a fuck-ton of snow. It was awful. Carmen's expression as she came up the driveway and got acclimated says it all.

she looks like such a baby in this photo. She sure has changed

One of my favourites from that day

Fortunately, today the weather was much better. And on saturday my ring was finally free of snow and ice!

However, the temperatures were cold and it drizzled off and on all day. So I didn't do anything with her.

Today, though was beautiful: sunny, warm and dry (all of that is relative of course). Julia was planning to come out and ride too.

In the morning I brought Carmen up to do some ground work with her. I was curious as to what she remembered. Turned out it was all of it. We had a good session and then I put her back out.

this is interesting....

When Julia came I did a little more ground work. Chester was stalking mice in the field next to the ring and caused a little bit of a reaction (bolt and rear). But right after that she settled right in. After a bit more I walker her over to the mounting block and  hopped on.

We are out of shape and I wanted this to be a good experience so we did mostly walk and a little trot. All I wanted to do was practice the riding exercises from the TRT method and they really worked. The biggest one was to keep a loose rein. But Carmen was good and despite some looking and tension, nothing happened. We moseyed around and enjoyed each other.

I don't think we rode long and then I hopped off. It's a start. On Tuesday I am travelling for work, followed by a visit with my sister so she's getting 10 days off (although, I don't think she's been 'on' so it probably should be considered time off. More like, time off continuing). Other then being out of shape, having her have time to think about how everything was okay is not a bad thing.

It was a great way to celebrate our anniversary (OMG, you guys I rode my horse!).