The In Between Rides Photo Dump

My equisense CONTINUES to not fucking work, so the ride tracking isn't going great. I'm using equilab but ughhhhh. I've swapped a truly ridiculous amount of emails with the equisense tech team and sent them innumerable bug reports, and they keep telling me "oh the new version should fix it!" and then it... doesn't. Sigh. About ready to chuck the damn thing in the trash can. 

At any rate, the weather continues to be relatively cooperative for lots of riding, yay! Bless my lights, since I would be getting exactly NOTHING done without those, minus the weekends. I've also had a few days recently where it's been easier to work at home and then I get to go ride right at 4 when I wrap up. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving I even got particularly froggy and rode BOTH horses, since I knew I could "sleep in" in the morning, lol. 

Still systematically working through different sorts of tack trying to make sure I can isolate that it is in fact a training problem and not a tack problem. Spoiler alert. It's definitely a training (well, training and balance) problem.

Graupel falling on Ruby when I was untacking one evening, she was NOT AMUSED. 

Walked in to a nice fire so I was happy lol. 

Trying to make good use of bands so I get the most "bang for my buck" with shorter winter rides. 

Lunging in the rain one evening. 

Not amused by that either haha. 

Jack being Jack lol. 

We spent a lovely 60 degree day doing farm projects, including deconstructing the goat pen and most of their shed (and scraping out several years worth of accumulated hay and goat shit, THANKS DH), and we rebuilt the dry lot fence adjacent to the barn. Since Ruby and Trigger were turned out there and we needed to rip out and replace some fence, I kicked them out front to eat grass. They weren't mad about it, lol. Ruby's clip is definitely more acceptable looking a few weeks out, lol.

Another day, more tack tweaks, haha. 

She's come such a long way!

The Monday before Thanksgiving got a little manic, but I got to watch the most beautiful sunset from Ruby's back, which helped restore some much-needed zen. 

DH aggressively loving Cinna and Cinna... not being here for it lol. 

Tack trialing continues, lol. 

My mom had bunion correction surgery and spent a few days here the week of Thanksgiving before heading back home. She was on very strong painkillers and she and DH thought it would be a good idea to bake two pies. 

DH was drinking salted caramel moonshine straight from the jar so I finally took over pie baking. 

Turned out delicious! Regular pecan on the right, bourbon chocolate pecan on the right. 

The dogs enjoyed our long weekend. 

Friday morning before the trail ride we threw up Christmas decorations. Doesn't take long when you live in a 1500 sq foot house lol. 

After my lesson I unloaded the trailer (since I still had all the trail ride stuff in it!) and spent some time tidying up in the tack room. Zen. Still obsessed. 

I had a freshly dragged arena earlier this week and it was perfect for remedial 20m circle work. Almost exclusively at the trot, so we didn't play the "now that I've cantered ALL I WANT TO DO IS CANTER" game. 

Why are circles so hard? I was pretty happy with our tracks at the end though! It was a good, productive ride. I mused on FB that starry-eyed 2013 Leah just dipping her toe into her first dressage lessons had no idea that eight years and four horses I'd... still be doing circles, lol. Dressage is hard. 

#thestruggleisreal

Skeptical horse is skeptical. 

She made poor life decisions and had to work V V HARD and got very sweaty. Sigh. One step forward and two steps back with this one. Thank God she's not my only horse, I'd lose my mind!