Coat Defense Winner + Moving On, Moving In, (Hopefully)Moving Up

Ladies & Gents, we have winner from the Coat Defense Giveaway!!

Congrats to one of the email entries, Julie, from kickinsand.blogspot.com! I’ll shoot ya an email to get your address, and the stuff should be on the way to you shortly. Hope it works as well for you as it did for me! Thanks to everyone who entered!

Now….we resume our regularly scheduled programming.

Wednesday was the last time I rode in the arena at the old farm. I had 30 minutes to ride, and got on at the tail-end of the last lesson of the night. Well, “she’s going to jump one more line and then be done,” turned into 20 minutes of me standing in the middle of the arena while kid jumped courses repeatedly. Sigh. Exactly why I had to go. I only had a few minutes left, so I toodled around and then Matt consoled poor lil’ P.

 

 

Thursday I packed. While I keep my house clutter-free, my trailer and tack trunk are a whole ‘nother story.

Then Friday I took P out on the trail to avoid any arena conflicts, and then promptly got us lost. I think from now on I should just stick to the same loop that begins and ends across from the trailer parking lot. At one point I wasn’t sure if we were actually close to the end, so I asked P for an, uh, enthusiastic canter and naturally, after spending an hour in the woods without coming across a single soul, quickly come upon a family and their stroller. Poor people had no idea how to act around a horse, and I had to convince them that my horse has indeed been around many a stroller in his day and the only reason he’s snorting is because they’re CROUCHING IN THE WOODS LIKE MURDERERS SO PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY STAND UP LIKE NORMAL PEOPLE.

 

 

 

Saturday, XC schooling was cancelled because horses suck and farriers don’t want to come out to nail shoes on before sunrise. Who woulda thought? But we moved and the new facility is still every bit as fabulous as it was when I toured it last week.

He unloaded and went into his new stall like the seasoned pro that he is. I’m pretty sure he just thinks he’s at a horse show.

So I unpacked the trailer into my new locker.

 

 

And then looked around and figured as long as he thinks he’s at a show, let’s get a ride in! So. What should we do? Dressage arena? Jump arena? Ooooorrrrr, hacking trail w/ XC jumps?

 

 

The only parts he didn’t like, and I knew it would happen, were the 2 large culverts we had to pass over on our walk. He’s always hated those, and we don’t see them as big as these very often. So after about a minute of persuading, he kind of bolted over, then came right back under control. And when we went over the second one, he was much better. So this will be a daily thing until they’re NBD.

We did end up heading into the jump arena so I could test the footing, and while it’s no Trainer B’s footing, it’s still good stuff. We did some W/T/C and hopped over a couple jumps, then headed back so he could eat and go out with a new friend.

 

 

And these are allowed on their stalls so P will love his new home even more.

P had off Sunday because I took Husband to the Panthers game with some friends as an early birthday present, but lesson with Trainer J this AM at the new barn!