Weekend recap: It’s finally over and we survived!

Published on by Amanda C

I am thrilled to report that the epic month-long rain has finally ended in Texas and we have a truly beautiful forecast for the week ahead. Everything is of course completely saturated so it’ll take a while to dry out completely, but we’re getting there. I even got to ride on Saturday AND Sunday. I’m not sure who’s happier, the humans or the horses. What a dreadful month May was. Henry celebrated his first turnout by pulling a shoe, so he was punished with bacon duct tape.

On Friday it was still too wet to ride anyway so I played around more with the dutch/cobra style braids. I used this tutorial that Now That’s the Spot found, and while I’ve seen many a video by now on how to do these, this one by far was the best one for me. I actually got a good looking braid on the first attempt! I’m gonna try to braid him like this at TR this weekend and see how it looks.

I also took advantage of a beautiful sunny Friday to get all my poor neglected tack out and give it a good clean and condition. Maybe I’m weird, but there’s something oddly satisfying about tack cleaning, especially when it’s really dirty to start with. I love looking at my pretties. And no, I don’t think I have enough PS of Sweden bridles.

On Saturday, Bobby (who is so narcissistic that he pretty much just scans my blog to see if I talk about him because he thinks that makes him “famous”) and I hauled over to our dressage trainer’s place for a lesson. Henry hadn’t been ridden at more than a walk for over a week, and the farrier wasn’t coming out until later that day to put his shoe back on so I wasn’t sure how sound he would be, but he was perfectly fine and ready to work. He’s really come so far in such a short period of time… I remember when it used to take 30 minutes to really get him connected, and now he’s connected pretty much right off the bat. We’ve still got a long way to go, but I can’t complain about his progress and his willingness. At the end of the lesson we worked on a few movements in the Novice test, mostly the half circle to canter depart. We never really got a good one, but Trainer helped me figure out the best way to ride it, so we’ll just do the best we can. His canter departs are really the only thing that’s still kind of icky right now. We’ll get it eventually. Until then we’ll keep getting 6’s for it and try to make up for it elsewhere.

leave it to the eventers to class up the dressage barn with a bacon-duct-taped foot

On Sunday since he had 4 shoes back on again I decided to take him out and do some conditioning sets. That’s really the first time he’s been out for a gallop (besides at shows on XC) for at least 4-6 weeks. I kept it pretty simple with 4 x 4min trots with 30 seconds rest in between, and 3 x 3min gallops (350-400ish meters per minute) with 1 minute rest in between. He worked up a good sweat but I was happy that despite the warm day he wasn’t even particularly winded at the end, and in fact would have liked to have kept going. Thank goodness for a thoroughbred, who can pretty much sit in a stall all month, run XC a couple weekends, and come out with a decent base level of fitness naturally. He should be just fine for Texas Rose this weekend.

Hopefully now that the monsoon is over (at least for a week) things will get a little perkier and more exciting around here! It’s so incredibly nice to see the sun and be able to ride again.

27 thoughts on “Weekend recap: It’s finally over and we survived!”

  1. Glad that you’ve finally got some good weather and been able to ride!
    Feel free to come up here anytime you want to clean my tack!!! I think that is my least favourite thing to do.

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  2. YAY for no more rain! Glad you got to ride two days in a row.
    LOVE those braids, so classy.
    I also really enjoy cleaning and conditioning tack. I conditioned my saddle this weekend too!
    That bacon duct tape is the best ever.
    Canter departs seem to be quite elusive for everyone, but I’m sure you and Henry will be fine at TR.
    YAY for Thoroughbreds 😀

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    1. I don’t get the credit for that idea, lots of people are doing it. I have to admit, I’d probably prefer the skinny C4 over the regular width for the purposes of a neck strap.

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  6. Henry look fabulous and so do those braids. Yay clean tack as well! I tried to buy pickle print duct tape for Dexter yesterday for if/when we need it but DH told me it was stupid. Sad.

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  10. Yay Henry! Sounds amazing. And trot/canter sets for Novice are really to make sure the rider can stay up in two point that whole time without flopping around, according to M. You’ll be good to go, as I can’t imagine you have much trouble with two point for four minute stretches.

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    1. Given that mine has some heat tolerance issues, I try to err on the side of over-fit rather than under-fit. But either way, I think he’lll be quite ok for 5 minutes at 400mpm.

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  14. yay for dry weather!!!! Henry must have been so pumped to be out galloping around again haha (even if he was a touch too exuberant with the shoe lol)

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