Dog Days of Summer

I really hoped to have a post scheduled every day last week, and god knows I had the content, but of course I scheduled those first three and then ran out of steam for more writing. Story of my life. On the plus side, I guess it's good that I'm staying too busy to write! We've entered the hottest, muggiest part of a Midwest summer, with temps in the 80s/90s with the heat index regularly in the triple digits. My arena is in pretty much full sun until late in the evening, and I prefer to ride as soon as I get home from work (before DH gets home and we start working on dinner together), so it's been a pretty sweaty few weeks!

I do love the look of a freshly dragged arena though! <3 still hoping we may be able to add Tru-Tex next summer (crosses fingers). 

We finally seem to have made it through the mini-monsoon season, so now that my arena isn't waterlogged daily with inches of rain, we're getting a lot of riding in! :) 

Skeptical Iberian mare is skeptical. I broke out my ME boots for the first time in ages and she had to re-learn how to walk with boots on her hind legs, lol.  

I do use the mirror to check my position every time I ride by but in terms of media, it's mostly only good for riding selfies lol. 

In my sparkly new saddle pad!

Ruby being the best bay mare, as always. 

Even if she sort of resembles a feral hippo at the moment lol. 

Jack is still doing great. 

Trigger had an allergy flare-up while I was at Pony Cup so as soon as I got back he was relegated to wearing the bug eyes of shame. It's mostly resolved now, but I'm leaving them on a few more days just to be safe. 

Last Monday evening our local GMO had a meeting, and it was really nice to see everybody again! We had some new faces -- two (newer to the area) dressage trainers were there, one who just built a facility and one who is leasing an existing facility that I've attended clinics at in the past. The group talked about what the community wanted/needed in terms of shows and educational opportunities, and I'm hopeful that maybe the club can start putting on some events again soon :) 

The teal-piped mattes with the teal reins is a really fun look, if I do say so myself. 

I will never get tired of spying on my sleeping horses during the day, lol. For those wondering why Cinna is wearing one fly boot, she is prone to summer sores and there is an almost healed one on that leg, and leaving that boot on 24/7 is about the only way I can get it healed up!

I posted this (and the next two photos) on my FB page joking about some people thinking this was too much teal, and that I didn't need that kind of negativity in my life. The comments went about as you'd expect, haha. People were hassling me about teal (human) boots, which I really do want! I am not keen on ordering from Celeris because of how they've treated some other customers (including a para rider who just needed to order one boot, and they refused, or someone who sent in measurements and they told her no person could possibly have those measurements and cancelled her order), and Divoza has a pair I quite like but I'm not certain the calves are quite wide enough (plus I can't seem to figure out how to get them to not charge me VAT!), so I guess I'll keep aimlessly customizing boots on the more boring sites and then not buying them, sigh. What I really need to do is have the nice pair of Petries I have taken to a cobbler and add a zipper so I am more inclined to use them. 

Still getting a ton of use out of my Brockamp, LOVE IT. 

Too much? Nahhhh. 

Average evening when I get home to ride after work, blergh. I miss being able to ride at 6 am and then just rinse off before sitting down at my computer for my work day. I could probably shift my hours for the summer like I did at my last job, but it's impossible to find parking at my building past about 8 am, sigh. 

Getting it done anyway!

I gave her a break from the teal, haha. 

I'm trying to remember to keep my equisense charged and logging most of my rides as we gradually work on fitness again. I need to stop being so aimless and get back into a regular calendar with an instructor again, but it's hard to find the motivation. I know virtual lessons are all the rage right now but I still haven't been able to get the Pivo working consistently enough that I want to bother a trainer with trying to work through it. I know that 80% of the problem is most likely the old ass phone I'm using with it, but I'm also hesitant to shell out $$$$$ for a nicer phone. Now that I've got a more reliable truck hauling out for lessons would be a breeze, it's just... committing to that. It'd also be easier if we were still WFH but I can't say any more about that without having a complete meltdown, sigh. 

Yeahhhhhh. 

Anyway. Yay for more riding? This photo dump was most of last week's rides, I'll give the weekend rides their own post :)