Summer Laziness

Summer has finally arrived in my neck of the woods. After I got out of school I was looking forward to warm, sunny days, but it was not to be. It rained for about two weeks straight. But the sunshine is officially back! As of 4th of July summer has arrived.

The ponies have been keeping me on my toes for the most part. It is in the 90s and I am so not a hot weather person. Meaning that I either have to wake up early to ride in the relative coolness (also really not a morning person!) or wait until the sun sets to ride. Waiting till the sun sets means I have only 30 minutes till it gets pitch black out though.

On 4th of July I put the horses inside, thinking it'd be better than having them (aka Addie, the only one with shoes) careening around the pasture. I could just see her slipping and getting hurt. Unfortunately, that was not a much better idea. I guess Addie decided she needed OUT of her stall and apparently tried to jump out. Luckily she's fine, no scrapes, no bruises, no lameness. I personally think she was pleased with herself... This was the result:

Yeah... that would be talent.

I came down in the morning to find her and Grady (he stays out at night) happily munching in the pasture while Jetta and Colton patiently waited for me to let them out. I thought if anyone was going to be stupid, it would be Jetta, but I guess she had done enough of her "remodeling" in the past that she decided to let this opportunity slide:

Obviously she needed to socialize with Colton next door, so she just decided to make some adjustments on her own...

Colton has been such a good boy lately. I'm so proud of him. We're heading to a show this Saturday (him and Jetta) and I previously thought we'd be farther along in our training than we are - a result of the rain/heat induced laziness. But he is still improving in leaps and bounds every time I ride him. We have now ridden twice in the outdoor arena and he is awesome. Learning to go in straight lines both on and off the wall, learning to halt from the walk and trot, steering at the walk and trot, 20 meter circles, etc. He is doing so well. The first ride he thought the arena was absolutely terrifying but he was fine on our ride this morning, which hopefully bodes well for the show this weekend. We'll be doing intro A and B.

Jetta has just been chilling. Our last ride in the "horse eating" outdoor arena was much better. We went for a ride down the road the other day and it was a nice change of pace. Jetta loves to go on trail rides. I have so many plans for the next two weeks:

• Go ride at the big horse park with friends
• School cross country at Inavale
• Ride at the beach at least once
• Dressage lesson with TS this Thursday
• Jumping lessons (1 or 2) with RC
• And, obviously, the dressage show with Colton and Jetta

The biggest thing coming up though, isn't horse-y at all. On July 20th I leave for Costa Rica! I'm beyond excited (and a little nervous as well). I will be gone for 5 weeks on a volunteer trip where I'll be working with a conservation program that tracks dolphins and whales as well as poison dart frogs. It's going to be awesome, but I've never been out of the country that long! So I'll try to post lots until then, but there's going to be a pretty long silence here on the blog. We'll be able to have sporadic access to a computer and internet and if it's fast enough I'll try to give quick updates so at least it won't be too boring here :)