The Weekend

It fined up for the weekend and in spite of the busy schedule we had, I managed to squeeze a ride in. Daylight Savings through everything out of whack, so I didn't get up till 9. Luckily that meant it was only 8 o'clock temperatures so Fox wasn't too hot when I got there. Mucked out as I do every morning, but the wheelbarrow was broken so I had to use a sack. Nice.

Fox seemed keen to get out and about so I decided to go for a hack instead of school. He only lifted his leg three times when grooming and for three of his feet he was great, the fourth he slammed down a couple of times but there was no evasion or nastiness. He was perfect while I was saddling up. I've had to change his gullet size again as he's put back on all the weight he lost over winter. Still need to get a saddle fitter out. Damn renovations sucking up all our money!!

Fox was eager to get going and sidled all over the place when I was mounting. He doesn't have a lot of patience for standing around. I've not been for a hack around here so I thought I would just cruise around and do a bit of exploring. Fox was on high alert. There was a bit of snorting and blowing going on but he wasn't too spooky. The road faded away as we reached the estuary which Fox looked at all wide eyed. I could see the road reappearing over the other side of the channel which looked shallow enough for us to cross but there was a whitebaiter fishing pretty close. I didn't want to make him angry, some have a pretty mean temper if you disturb their fishing.

I turned Fox and we walked down the side of the channel. It was muddy going in a few places but Fox coped ok. He had started to jig a bit so I was working quite hard to keep him to a walk. When we couldn't go any further we turned around back to the road.

I decided to have a bit of a trot to stop Fox jigging. It was a huge power trot and he wanted to canter which I wasn't comfortable doing on the side of a road. He did a couple of little bucks so we went back down to a walk. When he was calmer we tried a trot again and got something that was slightly more in control. The grass ran out far too quickly though so we were forced back to a walk. I am really missing the orchards of the other grazing right now. The most annoying thing was of all the cars that passed us, only one slowed down. Fox is fine with traffic but it still makes me angry.

Fox had worked himself up a bit so he was covered with sweat even though we hadn't done a whole lot of work. He's obviously feeling good so I think we can step up the workload a bit. The weather isn't cooperating though of course. It has packed in again and won't clear till Thursday according to the forecast. But with Daylight Savings here I should be able to squeeze some more hours in.