In the intermittent rain, plus the Two Horse Tack fit update

I'm going to be on solo mom duty all day tomorrow while Eric takes the truck and trailer to help his mom move furniture.

So today was for me. In the morning I made relish (See the Firefly blog for more details on that eventually) and then once Hazel was napping it was out to the barn. 

The rain was really refreshing, light but not a mist and not constant. 

First, I was trimming some flares and what do I see but a blown abscess. This mare, I swear. I only know she gets these after the fact. Good, I guess, but she does not need to be so stoic!

When I first reviewed the breastcollar from Two Horse tack I didn't really have a good way to judge the fit because I wasn't using my saddle. But here we go! I've added SO MANY holes to the biothane. And my hole punch must suck because it was not really easy...

But I finally tried a different configuration and now it's not nearly as droopy! I'm pretty pleased with the fit at this point! There's a perfect amount of room in her shoulder, so going down a size really wasn't going to be an option. And honestly, if I didn't need the girth loop I wouldn't have needed to make such drastic adjustments.

"Stop taking pictures of me, Mom!"

So we started with lunging. She was not nearly the wild mare of last week but she still had her moments.

Because of the abscess I was studying her very closely to make sure she was sound.

Dork.

Dork x2 But nicely uphill, LOL

Then my time to get on! We worked on transitions, lots of walk trot, not anticipating. I was doing a pattern of walking the long side, trot the short and she started guessing what was going to happen so I switched it up and she started guessing again. Smart mare!

After that it was more bending and lateral work. All said I rode about 30 minutes. Probably no more than a mile of arena work.

Saffron loves the arena. That's her rolling spot.

Getting rained on and enjoying it.

Then afterwards I bathed Gwyn in this stuff! We'll see how well it works.

Then she got her dinner.

All told, it was a good day. We went over the neighbor's house after the kids were asleep to roast s'mores and look for the Perseids. I saw quite a few before the clouds rolled in!