The horses are all home from Florida. We arrived back yesterday at three in the morning and today I need to drive back down to Florida pick up the house trailer. This means I don’t get to ride Solo before I leave. Solo has been in work while I was away. He has had as varied a schedule as we could work for him. I find he gets bored easily, and when he is bored he gets opinionated.
The snow and ice have finally cleared and the farm is not as muddy as I had expected, although we have rain forecast later this week. As it is, the ground is drying up and the colour is slowly returning to everything. In Georgia where we were just showing, the daffodils were out, and the peach trees were all coming into bloom, although we had frost in the morning on the cars. It doesn’t seem any colder here, just farther behind. I digress….the point is, that Solo has been able to go out and be ponied around the farm which he found terribly exciting. Apparently he would trot along with his head cranked right for a while, then left, then right, then a little dance and a buck, then back to getting a tourist’s neck ache. I haven’t had anyone else ride him but he has lunged, ponied, loose jumped and loose schooled. Yesterday was hill work, I imagine he had stopped looking around and showing off by the end of that session!
With Selena home Solo will be ridden while I am once again put-putting down US HWY 81 – I am sick to death of US HWY 81….. This will be my fourth time driving it inside three months. I listen to book tapes, I am halfway through Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince for the third time….it’s the only part I of getting back in the truck I am looking forward to. It will be interesting to see how Solo behaves for Selena. He will probably be a model of virtue and I will retire……not!
There were all sorts of exciting riders to watch in Georgia. Darren Chiacchia, Bruce Davidson, Leslie Law, The O’Connor’s, Amy Tryon, Garry Roque, Steven Bradley….lots and lots of Olympians….it’s very energizing to watch and work around riders of that caliber. You come back revved, renewed and ready. I am DESPERATE to get riding, but I have quite a bit of traveling still to do and more coming up ahead when I go to Plantation Field in April with the young riders from my barn. Sometimes working with horses doesn’t necessarily mean you get to actually ride them…..sigh.
