Shenanigans

I was really hoping that my first post back could be something about how stellar and wonderful my horse is, but alas. Don't get me wrong, he is definitely stellar and wonderful. He just choses not to be a lot of the time. Teenagers, sigh. That's probably what my mother thinks about me a large portion of the time, too!

Before I tacked Gambler up, I decided that we were long overdue for some loose work in the ring, so we headed down to the ring. He was SUCH A BUTT when I was opening the gate, he JAMMED his head into my chest and nearly knocked me over. Jerk. So, I backed him up like sixty feet, and then he was more than happy to give me my personal space. When in the ring, I sent him off at a trot, and it took about five minutes for us to join up, which is longer than usual. After that, I decided we'd work on the mounting block, even though he wasn't tacked up. I didn't get on him of course, seeing as I didn't have my helmet on, but I would just stand and lean on him. My new means of making him stand is that whenever he moves, I send him off at the trot for a few laps, switching directions one or two times, and then trying again. He pretty quickly decided that standing still was a much better option, so hooray for that.

Tacking up was a little less good than usual. Gambler is finally consistently standing like a normal, sane horse for being tacked up, which is fabulous and makes me want to start break dancing and singing because he used to be so, so horrible. Today, he sort of was horrible, but not really. He was just really ADD and thought that Punch was way more interesting than being tacked up. So we had a slight conversation about that. By the time that I was taking him down to the ring, Sally had started feeding, and Gambler decided that there was no way that he would walk down to the ring. Sally ended up walking behind us and tapping him on the butt every time he stopped, and he started walking very nicely, AKA wanting to trot and run me over. Oh well.

Then the real fun started. And when I say fun, I mean, the whole long process of mounting. Yay. It took us, oh, forty minutes? And I didn't even get on from the mounting block, I got on from the ground because I was 200% fed up with my horse's stupidity. I don't think I've ever been angrier at him, honestly. I hate when I get angry at him, because then I do stupid things like yanking hard on the lead rope to back him up, and smacking him. Honestly, smacking Gambler sucks. I hate it hate it hate it hate it. I feel so horrible. Anyhow, we had a good ride! By this point he was covered in sweat from trotting so much and I was really fed up, so we just did walking; approximately a million figure eights and ten meter circles. We also did Training Test 1 at a walk, because I was bored. I'm surprised I remember it, because I haven't ridden it in almost two years. :D

When I was taking Gambler up to the barn, poor Lyric had a meltdown on the cross ties and as a result, Gambler freaked out (we were right behind her and when she broke free and bolted, so did he) and kicked me in the leg. I'm icing it now, and really hoping it doesn't hurt too much for me to ride tomorrow. I'm such an equestrian.

On a side note, I get to go observe Sally's new horses PPE on Friday! I'm so excited!

...Yeah, I'm a dork.