Saturday...September 6th

We spent most of the day in Columbia running errands. I have not been in town on a Saturday in a long time, and add football game to the mix and it is even more of a mess! It all reminded me why I normally don't go to town on the weekend! Makes me very very cranky! GET ME HOME!!!!

Tripp and I went to the arena this evening and got done before the rain started. Yep! Good timing!
The arena was very muddy in spots - could not even walk thru them without slipping, so I had to be careful. There are short sand strips along the edges and one down the middle that was usable so I stuck to them as much as possible. Sometimes Tripp had a different idea tho. When we were cantering to the left, he wanted to go towards the middle. I had his head bent all the way to the right and was
bumping him with my left leg - which usually works - but not tonite. BUT....what he did do good was starting off on the correct lead, and once we even started the canter from a walk! SWEET! I did laugh tho......he brought his front end up and made this huge 'GRUNT' sound before he took off. He was letting me know it was more work than what he wanted to do. Ha ha! It was a nice slow rocking chair
canter too...very nice. Most of the others attempts took a couple of trot strides before he would go into it, which is still good if you ask me. And only one butt hop tonite!

We also worked on the side-pass stuff along the fence. He was watching something which I think helped. He got tired of me 'asking' him to move, then he would move over. It was almost huffy, like he was saying "Oh all right!" Then he would go back to watching whatever it was that he could see that I couldn't.

Trotting on the lead....when we were done I gave that a shot. We got an 'F' on our trotting grade card! So I unsaddled him and took him back in the arena and we tried again and again. We finally got it, so I trotted him all different directions on three separate occasions. He does stay a little more behind me than what I care for tho....I don't want him to all of a sudden feel all spunky and run me over, or bring those front hooves up when I am watching where I am going! But then
again he can do that even if was beside me....let's just hope he doesn't.

We only stayed out there about an hour, but it was a very productive hour.

We got quite a bit of rain this evening, and I don't know what is supposed to happen tomorrow....will play it by ear.

That is it for tonite...probably one of my shortest posts. :-)

Hope everything is doing well!
Until later...Karen and Tripp