Dee has been incredibly sweet lately. Too sweet, some might say. As if she is just being nice because she knows she will just murder everyone soon. I doubt that's the case, but at any rate, she reminded me yesterday that deep down, she is not sweet. Deep down, she is mischievous and a little bit of an unintentional jerk, despite the fact that she does love certain people and horses, and does try to do right by them most of the time. This, of course, is why we get along so well. How did she remind me of the fact that she's not sweet, you ask? Well, after a very good, but very easy ride, I untacked her and let her stand in the aisle while I brushed her back off. She's been very good about grooming lately, and I didn't even really pay attention to her while I was doing this, until I felt the very distinct feeling of teeth on my shirt. As soon as that happened, I then gave her the very distinct impression that her life was about to end. Right as I swung around, though, I caught the look on her face, where she was just looking at me like "crap! I did that! Why did I do that!?" She wasn't going for blood or anything, because she didn't connect with my skin at all, so I just imagine her standing there and thinking "I'm kind of bored, I feel like I should bite mom a little bit because she's not paying attention to me enough." Silly mare.
Today, when I got to the barn it started pouring down rain. So, I decided that we would have a rainy play day instead of riding. I took her out to the covered arena, and lunged her for a bit, just to let her stretch her legs. After that, we had some fun. First, we worked on in-hand leg yields, which she was a very good girl for, and then I unhooked the lunge line to see what would happen. She stayed right at my side, stopping when I stopped, turning when I turned. We even wandered over cavaletti together. She was so good that at one point I made a sharp left turn, and sort of went backwards, and to mirror me, she did a lovely turn on the haunches. I then started jogging around the arena, and she jogged right along with me at my side, very much like a dog. Sometimes it's fun to just play with your horse with no real purpose in mind. When we finished, I stood her in the middle of the ring, told her to "stay" and grabbed my camera (phone). While she did stay where I put her, she insisted upon making ridiculous faces or "blah" faces the whole time. Oh well, at least I got two cute photos of her "smiling" for the camera (one is a yawn... in the other I think she was just laughing at me).
Day 14- Your dream barn/farm
I am torn about what I want eventually, but it is one of these two things:
1. Boarding at a barn with a covered arena, lots of places to hack, a big outdoor, big pastures that get taken care of, and an in-house instructor that I really enjoy riding with.
2. Owning a farm. If I owned a place, I probably wouldn't have a covered arena, because I'd probably only have Dee and [eventually] her baby. Well, maybe also another retired TB that is quiet but maybe not suitable for a hard job. I would, however, want a nice big arena, to be able to fit a large dressage arena in. The barn could be quite small - 4 stalls and a tack/feed room would suit me just fine. I would also love to have several pastures, with either lots of trees or a run in, so that I could rotate the horses AND so that they could be happy and cool outside during the day. I would also like to be able to afford to have someone come and feed/do stalls a few times a week like I used to do for Bettina, since I'm sure sometimes I would be working too late to be able to do evening feeding.
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