Pause, Refresh

Let's see, where did I leave off? Oh yes! Motivated and ready to ride! Brimming with enthusiasm! Maybe making show plans and goals again! You know where this is going, right....? Haha.

Pretty sure Ruby is visible from space in her new day glo pink sheet 😂

And then life happened last week.... ughhhh. Monday, adult-y errands ate up my whole evening. Tuesday and Wednesday I worked in the hayfield (cause ponies gotta eat!). Thursday I woke up hacking my lungs out, and Friday it rained most of the day (and then a family medical emergency kind of kiboshed my planned lesson, which actually probably saved me from having to cancel due to the rain?). To say I was grumpy by Saturday would have been a bit of an understatement, haha.

Accurate representation of 90% of Thursday. Dachshund snuggles are good medicine. 

I did however drag my heavily medicated self out to briefly lunge on Thursday evening, because I did not want a fire-breathing dragon for the lesson on Friday. Oh well. 

Instead she was a fire-breathing dragon Thursday -- like whoa. 

She pulled out her best CRAZY HALTER HORSE card -- head up, neck about two inches long, and hind end trailing in a different ZIP code. Like why mare, why?

She did eventually regain her sanity and work nicely. 

Despite everything still being a bit soggy, I did sneak in a brief hack on Saturday before heading down to my old barn for a Halloween shindig (roasting marshmellows and watching Hocus Pocus on the side of the barn = epic!). Ruby started off super, we had a brief stop-and-snort at the neighbors sheep, and then a minor reversion in the field to a jigging monster, but as soon as I mentioned it to DH (with annoyance, like "whyyyyy is she being like this again?"), she blew out a breath and flat walked on a loose rein again.

So muddy. Don't judge me... haha. 

We have some pretty color in our woods!

Best trail buddies everrrrrrr. 

My phone lag didn't catch Ruby and the billy sniffing noses and it was SO CUTE so you'll just have to trust me haha. 

Sunday I was DETERMINED to take advantage of the gorgeous weather, so we road tripped out to our home away from home trail -- Indian Camp Creek. I debated trying another new trail, but after the clusterf*@#$& that was our last new trail adventure, we wanted tried and true. And the fall foliage did NOT disappoint! Everyone else had the same idea - we ran into several other pairs of riders, lots of bikers (some polite, some rude AF), pedestrians with dogs, and at one point when we were splashing around in the creek we watched a group of kids also playing and almost fall in, which was super funny. Ruby was entranced.

So many beautiful trees! (don't worry, DH was driving lol)

Riding out in a sidepull -- getting her husband broke ;) it only backfired on me once when she wanted to canter and canter and canter and did not feel like stopping, so there was some porpoising involved, lol. 

I love the creek access there.

So much fun splashing around in the creek! And Ruby is polite enough not to try to roll, lol. 

Rocking that RW hat ;)

DH is the coolest and captured this dreamy shot in the leaves. 

It's still fucking in metric so no idea what the mileage actually was, and I'm too lazy to convert. 

It was exactly the kind of pause, refresh day I needed to relax and feel ready for another long week at work... and bonus -- today is going to be probably our only nice day this week, and I have a lesson this evening! Hopefully all the gross, rainy, cool evenings later this week will mean I have time to write about it ;)