Rain!

Eating her beet pulp snack in her grassy paddock prior to our workout. She eventually decided the grass was tastier...But see the sun? This will come into play later.

"What are you DOING, Mom? I want to ride!"

I was FINALLY able to ride yesterday. It had stayed dry overnight, so I put Lily on the lunge to let her play before tacking up. Ummm...yeah. Good thing I did. I warmed her up at a walk, then let her choose what gaits she wanted to work at because of her foot-she would know best what hurt and what didn't.

She, of course, decided to gallop madly in a tight circle around me, performing acrobatics in the air-bicycles, bucks, kicks, a total display of her very own version of airs above ground. I swear she threw in a capriole or two... I asked her to change directions by doing a half-bow and changing hands on the lunge line, and she immediately obliged. This is the first time she's changed direction at a full gallop, and she did it by twirling on one foot, leaping into the air in a buck/kick combo to land facing the opposite direction and the correct lead. WOW! And took off running again.

She was so full of herself that I decided to just let her blow off steam at liberty. The Roundup is still in the ground of course, but I remembered that as long as we're both in a working frame of mind, she will not nibble grass while working without the lunge line. I had her whoa and calmly walked her over to close the arena gate, then set her free. She thoroughly enjoyed galloping around. She had the most uphill canter she has ever performed at liberty so far (not super-dressagey, but a tremendous improvement from her previous stilted canter), and she made me grin like an idiot by performing her wonderful floaty trot. Yup, this mare does not hurt anymore-she had been unable to do that when this whole issue started.

I let her decide when she wanted to stop. She cantered around in both directions for a few minutes, then trotted in both directions (I asked her for the changes from the center of the arena), and when she chose to walk again, I stopped moving and she came to me. Good girl! :)

We worked a little on turns on the forehand, shoulder-in, backing up, and that Parelli rollback thing with the lunge (I have no idea what that exercise is called) that used to frighten her so. I've said it before, but I'll say it again-this is the #1 gauge for finding out where Lily's head is at, and it works so well to calm her down!! She was a little hypersensitive initially, but after a couple of times in each direction, she stepped quietly away from me and turned to face me. It always feels like a dance when we do this right-when executed smoothly, it is very much like sending your partner into a twirl on the dance floor!

I then took her back into the barn to tack up. I used the new mullen mouth snaffle on her, because I was planning on just walking and doing more lateral work, since she had already gotten all her cardio in and then some. However, Judy had arrived and was riding, and seemed to be in a funky mood again, so I ended up ditching all my plans and just heading out to the park instead.

This is the first time I've ridden her out in the mullen mouth, and any other time after not riding for 4 consecutive days I probably would've switched it out for her pelham, but the decision to hit the trails had been spontaneous, and I chose to just go with my gut-my gut said Lily would be fine in the mullen mouth.

There were some clouds rolling in, but I didn't think it would affect us-I had been keeping an eye on the direction of the wind and a rain band had already swept by without touching us. We hit the skinny trails, which were damp but not muddy. We were probably 100 feet in, when we came face to face with 2 raccoons. Yes, raccoons are small. But they are also fearless, and they are the #1 rabies carriers in South FL. These two were headed in our direction on the path. Lily stopped to look at them, but remained calm. I quietly turned her around and we headed back out to the powerlines.

No sooner were we on the powerlines, than the wind picked up and the skies opened up-it poured!! Lily tossed her head, but I made her walk all the way up the powerlines and turned left at the end, facing the hills and the shelters. We stopped under a particularly densely leafed tree to wait out the worst of the rain, and of course it stopped as suddenly as it had started. I had Lily walk over to the shelter anyway-she used to go through these without a problem last summer. This shelter was crammed with picnic tables, and she took a good look at them, but I had her walk between the rows, ducking my head under the low ceiling as we went from one end of the shelter to the other, just to make sure she could still do this. We then walked onto the road, and at this point I could see the angry clouds in the sky-another rain band was coming. We turned around and trotted on the grass by the road, trying to make it to the powerlines before it started to rain again.

We didn't make it. It started raining again as we were coming even with the entrance to the main trails, so I had Lily go into the cover of the trees instead. These trails were quite wet-no puddles, but fairly muddy, which made me cringe-I had not duct-taped her foot because I had foreseen NONE of this! The rain started coming down really hard as we reached the opening in the trails that leads to the powerlines-the trees became useless as cover, and we were both drenched. I had Lily wait here regardless, which made her dance with impatience at seeing the path home but being forced to stand still. I had to turn her a couple of times, but she eventually gave up and stood, waiting. At this point I was actually glad I had ridden her in the mullen mouth snaffle-she would've been tossing her head like crazy with the pelham when asked to be still.

The rain eventually slowed to a drizzle and we left the cover of the trees to power walk back home. I wanted SOOOO bad to just send her into a gallop back to the barn, but this would've been a huge mistake for two reasons:
1. I had no interest in teaching her to gallop every time it rains-she had already tried to pick up a trot when it started to drizzle, as the rain annoyed her.
2. Galloping home is always a bad idea unless you're fleeing from danger-it would've been months before I could get her to just walk home again.

So we walked. I could see the rain moving away ahead of us against the light of the setting sun (pretty cool) but knew we had another band approaching fast behind us. We had to turn right at the end of the powerlines to take the white trail/asphalt bike path back to the main road, and here we were caught by the rain again. I let Lily trot here, as we have done it before without her trying to accelerate. For whatever reason she chose to trot on the asphalt instead-wet asphalt is cleaner than the white clay, for sure, and probably less slippery, now that I think about it, and it was a good exercise for strengthening tendons. We only did this for about 10 yards before we were on the street, and there we just slowed to a walk for the rest of the way home.

OF COURSE the minute we stepped onto the barn driveway, the rain stopped. I hopped off Lily and led her over to my truck, where I had a dry shirt (yesss!). I was soaked and cold and at this point didn't care-I sat in the truck with the door open and stripped to my sports bra and switched shirts, Lily's reins looped on my boot. She's such a good girl-she tried to sneak a bite of grass, but I gave her a firm "No!" and she immediately popped her head back up and waited.

She had been WONDERFUL on this ride, and she received Stud Muffins, had her foot disinfected with antimicrobial shampoo, had a long anti-fungal bath with a deep scrubbing (she stretched her neck out and made goofy faces while I scrubbed!) and then had her foot soaked for 30 minutes. She kept taking it out of the tub, but she was back to normal in terms of resting it-she was alternating feet or even standing square. *Relief!!* I dried it, sprayed her frog with iodine, stuffed the crack with cotton and antibiotic ointment, then applied ichthamol to her abscess (which is also healing fantastically-it has stopped draining), and put her away in a nice, clean fluffy stall for the night with her haynet. She was definetely a happy horse. :)