Being Present

Spending 24 hours without my cell phone this week was shockingly delightful. Well, I mean, not really surprising if you look at all the studies on what social media and cellphones do to mental health. 

Picture taken when I showed up to feed breakfast on Wednesday morning before abandoning my phone at the repair place for a battery replacement. I arrived at the barn to feed at 9 AM because I had worked overnight. He'd like everyone to know that 9 AM is a FULL TWO HOURS hours after he usually eats... he was not mad, but was VERY chatty and VERY interested in coming in for breakfast. 

Wednesday afternoon, in the midst of ANOTHER 3-4 inches of rain, I found myself sitting in the barn aisle. I was alternating between watching my pony vigorously remove hay from his very small hole hay net and watching raindrops hit the top of a puddle. It was raining too quickly for me to fully watch the ripples spread, but the pattern was very pleasing. Butterball and I had gotten 6 minutes into a 20 minute trot set when the lightning started. If I'd had my phone, I would have been mindlessly scrolling and missed those moments. 

Eventually the lightning portion of the storm blew past enough that I felt comfortable that we were most likely not going to get struck by lightning. So we started out again in a light sprinkle to do the remaining 14 minutes of trot and then 3x2min canter. My last two trot/canter sets have been done on the dirt roads around the GY's. There is a 10 acre hay field we can do loops around, but with this much rain, the lime rock/sand roads are actually pretty great for moving out on. The rain keeps the sand not too deep and not too hard. It's really nice to just go straight and not make a million loops around the field. 

Butterball felt absolutely fantastic. Shockingly, the dressage work from the ring is carrying over to everything. When he wanted to bulge away from things after reinforcing the lateral leg aid once, I could just close my leg on the side he was moving towards, and he would straighten up. He was very spritely and forward. When we did the canter work he was really moving out on his own, and I could practice my galloping position with no need to do anything else. When we played with forward and back in the canter/hand gallop he was coming back straight and steady and then moving out easily again from my leg. We were even doing flying changes in straight lines, something we haven't really done before. The first one was unintentional as I unevenly applied leg when sitting down to package him up, but then I realized what I had done and started asking for them intentionally and getting clean changes both directions. COOL!!!!

The roads had quite a few puddles, but rather than slogging through them he actually picked up the pace even more as we charged through one of the larger ones. It was an absolute blast being out there on him feeling him feeling so great.  Lots of pats and carrots for him after an evening ride that was really just pure joy.