Success!

What a blessed day today has been. We have heard all week that it was going to rain today. Again--another Saturday. We missed last Saturday because of rain! Although the wind blew like crazy yesterday and the temperature dropped substantially, we decided to ride this morning if at all possible. 

This morning it was pretty still and the sky was a mottled cloud cover of white, gray, and pink tinged clouds. There was some blue sky peeking through. But no rain. We loaded up and went up Hennessy. The big puppies were inside the pot fence and we all loaded up and headed out without incident. 

Shirley led most of the way and when we got to the top, Lynn said she had a plan. So we took the middle road and headed down the hill. I was nervous about her plan, but it turned out great. We went down the trail where the bees were in the tree. Toby confidently navigated the "technical" parts of that trail: the tight path under the tree and next to the dry creek bed; the sharp turns around the horizontal tree where the bees were; the huge hole next to the trail; ducking under the low branches--everything. He loped up the hill toward the little creek, jumped it, but everything looked smooth. And then. . . yep! PUDDLES.

Toby managed to jump or skirt the mud and small creeks and puddles until we got to the big meadow. When we dropped down we could see there were BIG puddles. So we splashed around for probably an hour. We got Toby to come into the puddle because he wanted a bite of a granola bar!! LOL. I just held it out a little bit farther than he could reach and he took a step toward it until we were in the middle and then I gave him the treat. He seemed to trust Jupiter, so he followed us around--in and out of puddles. Jupes even started doing a Keota and splashed water everywhere, but he went in and out of puddles with us. 

Lynn got off because we dropped a granola wrapper in the huge puddle and she tightened our cinches, which were hanging. So she was on the ground and Zigs was just standing and watching. When Shirley and I went around the bend to make a circle through several puddles and Lynn walked over to watch us come toward her, Zigs was not happy about being all alone. He was going to follow us, but stepped on his rein. Otherwise, he would have dragged Lynn's reins through all the muddy water. 

It was all good. We also went up to the big puddle we worked on in weekends past. We put him in between us and we all walked in and back through. His flanks still tremble, but both horse and rider and starting to trust each other. Yaay!

Back to the weather: we wore our chinks, thank goodness; Lynn was in and out of vest, jacket, jacket, vest; both Shirley and I wore gloves and my cheeks were cold. It was pretty crisp on the back side and the clouds started piling up and becoming a solid sky. The wind started coming down the trees as we headed back to the trailer. We could hear the storm rolling in. 

We couldn't have timed it more perfectly; as we pulled over to let cars go by at Lynn's there were sprinkles on the windshield. We put the horses up and as I pulled out of the driveway, I had to turn on my windshield wipers. It has been breezy all day with sun coming in and out of showers. We were truly blessed today.