Riding - last two rides

Okay, I'm behind again.

Friday night: Not a bad ride. No loping this year. :( They were planning to lunge Peyton a bit before we started; apparently he was a bit of a twit on Thursday, but we decided to see how things went. And they went pretty well. We started outside, and Mr Peyton was moving right along, like a dream. Then we went inside, and his trot disappeared until the "encouragement stick" came back. I don't even have to touch him with it, it just has to be there. Of course, he also sees it out the corner of his eye, and it makes it much harder to get his jog-trot back. Lots of trotting, and some patterns. We did okay, even managed the trot-through L. Peyton did spook a bit at the end of the arena, where he'd been twitty the night before - one of the turned-out horses outside stuck his/her head over the gate.

Our demonstration was moved to Saturday, which was of course hellishly hot. Only 87, but the humidity was insanely high, and we were all sweating buckets. It was hotter at 9 a.m. Saturday than it was at 8:00 Friday night (when it was still 80 degrees). And as usual, my face turned it's distractingly-bright shade of red after about five minutes outside. There was a breeze outside, but we moved to the indoor after warming up - it's larger, and there's shade (and ceiling fans). Peyton and I are apparently the Marlon Perkins & Jim of the area - in addition to the bat last week, we had to swerve off the rail to miss a stray box turtle that was puttering along the arena wall.

It was a short ride, 45 minutes instead of an hour, so we only got one trip through the pattern. Ours started out fine, with jogging around the end of the arena, swerving off the rail to go over three poles, and then back to the rail. However, our trip down the center line spun out, until I got the crop again. Circled back to the rail and started that part over, and it went fine. He gets very boingy over poles, and I wish we could have done more than three poles in a row, so I could get the feel for it. He was also, I thought, a little hard to halt at the end, but Sara said it looked nice, so it must have been my imagination. DH got a few pics and some shaky video (hard to handle a camera while wrangling a three-year-old) - I obviously need to lose some flab, and both my shoulders and legs are a little too forward. Peyton's trot is pretty easy to sit, though.

So that's it for the year. Except for this rash on one arm that turned up Thurs or Friday. It's the arm that had a lot of contact with sweaty saddle pads, so maybe it's just prickly heat or something. Or poison ivy, although Peyton is pretty much an indoor pony. Or a reaction to the meds he was getting for his leg scuff. Who knows.