January Wrap Up

Cozy pony

It is ridiculous to whine about cold weather given what is occurring in the rest of the country, but Florida did see some frigid temps this month. Ms. GY went out of town for a few days and what is normally a fun feeling of practicing having my own farm turned into a literal pain in my hands. I don't cope well with the cold, and I have weird feelings about keeping gloves clean so kept taking off my gloves to do things, thereby defeating the purpose of wearing them at all. I did prep better after the first night: draining the hose didn't work, it needed to be left to drip; pre-dumping the stall water buckets so I could fill them with relatively warm water in the morning for their few hour stall hang out; pre-filling hay nets the night before because even though I don't want to stuff nets when it is 40, I really, really don't want to when it's 26 degrees. It warmed up for a couple of days after she got home and then got icy again. A feels like of 8 is not nice, Florida. Hillary very kindly lent me her neck cover for BB since I clipped him two weeks ago and only own a medium weight and a sheet. So he got his sheet then medium weight with the medium weight neck cover. He seemed fine. But then again he's always seemed fine, he's a sturdy fellow. 

Anyways, back to the rest of the month. 

	Butterball
Training rides	1 – ½ at a time
Lessons	3
Hacks	5- 1 off property at Price’s Scrub
Flat rides	8
Conditioning rides	0
XC school	1- Star Farm
Shows	0

Total of 18 rides. We had two lessons at the start of the month that were split with PW starting him and then me hopping on. Then one lesson P.S. (post-shoes), where I rode him the whole time. It went well. I think the two week break while adjusting to shoelessness was helpful for both of us mentally. 

Shout out to Tack Shack for fixing the fancy Antares after the cheek piece strap on the crown piece snapped. How his skin feels about the bridle is TBD. 

Generally he's been feeling great barefoot. In fact he is "slipping" a hind leg way less behind P.S. And he's only tripped once up front while he was staring at the neighbor's beagles; this is a definite decrease. I thought the Scoot Boots would add more bulk than traditional steel shoes and lead to more tripping, but he seems more sure footed with them on. 

Looking ahead, in February we're actually going back to HITS. I know. I know. I wrote a whole post essentially about how I wasn't interested in doing rated shows. But, y'know, an opportunity presented itself. We're just entered in the 90s this go round and I'm feeling more carefree about the whole thing. As PW says "NO pressure. Be cool." 

And I'd like to go back to JV for a refresher, we're hitting a bit of a wall in dressage where I feel like it would be helpful to get some new homework. 

Photos from when Florida was playing nicer earlier in January.