heat wave!

Lucy was very chipper today (then again, so was I! It was 50 degrees!!). I went to get her out of her paddock and she was like, "hi! hi! how are ya! hi! what's up! where's my treat! hi!"

She was fantastic under saddle, but it was because she wanted to canter so badly during what I wanted to be our warm up, so finally I was just like, fine, get it out of your system, and she proceeded to give me the most lovely, relaxed, happy canter we've ever had. Going to the left, she picked up the wrong lead along the long side of the arena, with the corner fast approaching. I was going to ask her to do a simple change (trot first, then pick up the correct lead) but she saw the corner and on her own accord executed a lovely flying change. Smart girl.

After I let her canter both directions for a good five minutes each she was able to concentrate better on the trot work, and I felt like the whole ride was very productive! Yay!

She was quite sweaty and I decided it was the perfect opportunity to take her for a walk on the road (in hand) so I untacked her and put her cooler on, and off we went. She did great with the cars, bicycles, and dogs until some jerk in a souped-up Jeep passed us at like 40mph without moving over hardly at all or slowing down, and then GUNNED it right when he passed us. I could almost see her little brain melting. Poor thing was on pins and needles after that and spooked repeatedly at the cars...great. I decided to just have her stand on the side of the road perpendicular to the pavement so that she could see the cars approaching and driving away, and this seemed to help a lot. We also said hello to the Heritage horses, who were out enjoying the sunshine in their gorgeous grass turnouts. She was very interested in the horses and kept nickering to them.

When we got back from having our brains fried, I turned her back out and did a bunch of chores (her stall/grain/water, threw hay down from the loft, cleaned all of my tack and boots and bridles, and tidied up in general) and then brought her in and fed her.