Not Much Going On

God, I just realized that it's been more than a week since I have blogged. Of course the title says most of it.

But of course that's not really true. That is just one perception. My son has left for his deployment and we have Ripley living with us. She's been with us off and on her whole life so it's not a huge adjustment.

Guinness doesn't understand why she'd rather roll in the
snow then play with the ball. 

Carmen's abscess is slowly getting better. I lunged her Friday and she seemed to be better with a possible a small amount of soreness. Or my imagination. Like 0.5/5 on the lameness scale. But it was a really good ground work session. I've been spending a lot of effort on working on my own inner calm and creating a safe bubble. She started off a bit tense and wanting to run but settled down nicely.

It snowed overnight and there was nice soft fluffy snow. I tacked her up and took her to the ring.  I usually have Guinness out with me when I ride so I decided to have them both out. That turned out to be a mistake because Ripley kept running in and out of the trees and brush and I could see that Carmen was getting overwhelmed. When Ripley came running out with a 10 foot long branch she kinda lost it. Which was fair. At the same time H showed up. H is the young woman learning to ride on Irish and I had totally forgot that we had set up a time for to come. I asked her to give me a few minutes to finish lunging Carmen while she went and got Irish prepared.

I then had an idea. I took Carmen back to the barn and threw her in the stall while I put the dogs in the house. I helped H get ready and then we all went back to the ring. I figured that Carmen could hang out with us and chill while I worked with H.

Carmen: what is this? 

At first she was a bit unsure but quickly settled into just hangout out looking really relaxed. it took about 15 minutes of me doing nothing with her for that to have an effect. I then took her over to the mounting block, hopped on and then had her stand in the middle of the ring while I gave instructions to H. At first she was tense but with me not asking much of anything she began to chill again. every now and then I would ask her to do something so I could show H. We even followed behind Irish and H so I could check her balance.

H is learning to trot and I introduced the concept of posting. She was struggling because as she lost balance Irish would stop. Which is good from a safety perspective but not so much for learning. I had her come behind us and I had Carmen pick up a really slow trot. That way she could have some time to figure it out. At first Irish was a bit frustrated by the slow trot and tried to pass us. Which was funny. Carmen, however, was getting into it.

This is weird but okay

I was quite happy with her and our ride.

The next morning was a lot colder but I was able to drag the ring.

love the difference that rubber makes

I started with lunging Carmen. At first she was fine but then began to be lame on her right fore. I put her away quite disappointed. But the ground was harder and it must have felt uncomfortable. She seems fine now but I have been unable to ride between work and weather. 

I console myself with baking

Yesterday was a very hectic day at work. I came home late and Ed had started to feed the horses. I took over and when I was done I stood between their stalls just standing and breathing. Both came over and hung out with me for a bit. There's something about stopping and just quietly breathing with horses that helped to settle me and calmed the noise in my head. 

It seems that there is always something to cause work and stress and it can begin to seem that the only answer is to do more and more and more.

 I think my big lesson this year is that sometimes the answer is to do less and less. Or, you know,  not much.