Shake, Rattle & ......

ROLL! But we'll get back to that later. ;)

The sun has officially arrived! Not sure how long it will last, but 73 today felt awfully damn good!! I cant even believe it was that warm, I'm sitting her at 7pm in a tank top and shorts. 4 days ago, it snowed.. Gotta love WA

I was getting really excited as the weekend approached, the weatherman was promising 2 days of beautiful weather and considering we had not been riding in almost 2 weeks, we were itchin to get out. But, alas... Edgar pulled up lame and started gimping on Thursday. I kept an eye on him and he just did not improve by Friday, was even worse Sat morning and still lame this morning. I believe he has a stone bruise developing. Saturday night at our annual Horse Club Dessert Auction (of which we escaped with only $36 in damages) a few members were wanting us to get out and ride with them on Sunday and I had to turn people down, Derek kept asking me.. are you sure Edgar will not be ok to ride? then a few minutes later he'd say "dont you know anyone who has a horse you can borrow?" lol well i know lots of people with horses, but they are all riding them!! lol I felt bad and then someone mentioned he could go out w/o me on Sunday, OH HELL NO! I dont think so.. Just Kidding, okay well maybe not really. I would let him go w/o me, but I would have been pretty darn jealous.

Saturday was a pretty busy day, got some errands done, burned almost all the rest of the wood we have to burn.. one more day of burning aught to clear that mess finally up. Danielle and Collin stopped by.. then Tyler dropped over, along comes George with his dog Cash who we are housesitting for the week (he's a young boxer and Russell is not very happy, he's turned into a grumpy old man who likes his peace and quiet), George left and my parents showed up, Danielle left, then Adam & Tracy came over.. ate dinner and then we all headed to the auction, got home around 10:15 and burned some more til about midnight.

Here's cute little Collin playing in our backyard while we did some burning

Of course I woke up Sunday pretty bummed that we were not going to get to ride and as we were picking up poo in the corral at 8:15, it hit me that I DID know someone with a horse I could borrow!! I stood there in the corral with my cell phone in hand for about a minute just looking at the phone, Derek had to laugh at me, I just wasnt sure if I should really call my friend so darn early in the morning, but hey, she's a mommy to a 1yr old, so I finally hit send. She was awake, whew. She was more than happy to let me take out Bandit, a big black/white leopard appy who is about as tall as Edgar, just not as wide.

Derek had a lesson on Oakley at 9am, so we arranged to meet some friends at Mann Rd at 2pm. Derek's lesson went really well. Luanne is doing great with Oakley, I had a nice video of her working him but I think the file is too big, it will not load up on here. We dropped in on Saturday and caught her in the middle of Oakley's daily workout, so some pics of her on him are from Sat and the ones with Derek are from today. He rode for just over an hour and has some "homework" he is supposed to practice on Blackie Smalls. He was feelin a bit sore, she has him working muscles he's not used to working so when we loaded up the horses later in the afternoon and headed out to Mann Rd, he was half asleep on the drive and I'm thinking he was second guessing his decision to ride twice in one day! lol

Look at the extension on that jog! I love how Oakley moves..
Working at the Canter

Derek & Oakley - PreLesson :)

Derek is starting to learn what Oakley is learning and how to get what he wants

A nice pic of Derek trotting, working on getting some bend in Oakley

Post Lesson Question & Answer time. Derek's lookin like a real pro here, just relaxing on his horse

Here is Derek today doing some work at the trot. Derek doesnt have much experience/time at the trot, so he is learning how to sit the trot and stay natural and balanced. He did about 20-30 minutes of trotting today, he'll be a little sore tomorrow! :)

We are getting close to the ROLL of this post... I had decided not to take my camera on today's ride, pshh nothing was going to happen worthy of needing pictures! HA I wont make that mistake again.. We were heading down some great trails and as we are getting closer to the River, I am thinking to myself, I had better warn Derek when we get to the beach/sand area that I have a very strong feeling his horse is going to attempt to roll.. but as we are approaching the beach, I see a couple gals from our horse club so I stop my horse and say hello and am literally chatting for just a couple seconds when I realize that something is happening!! I look over at Derek and Smalls is ON the GROUND, starting the process of rolling, while Derek is still in the saddle.. I start to yell to get off, but of course he is smart enough to figure that one out on his own and he's just standing there (what felt like seconds was mili-seconds I'm sure, it was like slow motion) so anyways, he's standing there staring at his horse with this look of "what the hell just happened" and I start yelling "GET HIM UP, GET HIM UP" You dont want a horse to roll over on your saddle, not good.. Smalls gets up and derek is perplexed.. I give him some pointers on what to do if it should start to happen again, how to avoid it blah blah.. After a few minutes he gets back on and decides to keep his horse going in tight circles.. Now you have to realize, this is not hard sand, this is soft supple deep very nice sand! lol

So he is circling and no joke, w/o ANY warning, his horses just drops! Seriously, I was watching this time and Smalls doesnt drop and roll, no he just drops and lays there with all 4 legs tucked under him like he's just gonna tan in the sun on the beach... Derek kinda rolls off and gets Smalls back up and proceeds to let Smalls know that THAT was a very bad idea and a few minutes later, Derek gets back on and all was good. He kept him moving while he was on the sand, there were no more incidents. If I had the camera, I would have had some great pictures and possibly video. After that, Smalls was a little worked up with all the excitement and started acting up, jigging and trotting a lot, being hot and sassy basically, so we plopped him behind the horse I was riding who was walking as slow as a snail and Smalls straightened right up.

Derek had quite the weekend! I'm just happy to have a horse to borrow so we could take advantage of this great weather while it lasts. I actually got a little bit of a sunburn on the back of ny neck from being outside yesterday!