Hot Girl Summer

A couple posts ago, I mentioned how happy I was that hurricane season finally started since Lucie's feet will now get more regular contact with moisture. Then it rained for, like, two weeks straight. I mean hard, intense rain. Like there was a tropical storm both of those weeks. I see now why Florida makes people crazy.

It makes mares crazy, too

I went out to the barn a couple times during the downpours. It sucks because the barn is kind of far from home but so close to my office. I try to go right after work, but I only work three days out of the week, so if the weather is bad I just go straight home. The handful of times that I did visit, I gave Lucie some much needed attention and offered my trainer some help. Fun Fact: I'm the best damn water bucket filler in all of the South. Unfortunately, I did get caught in the storm while bringing horses in. Second Fun Fact: my paddock boots are very not waterproof.

After the bad weather, we had a tight deadline at work and my hours basically doubled in a week. Things slowed down a little bit recently, so I took the opportunity to go spend time with the ponies. When I arrived, I caught up with one of the other boarders and she let me know that Lucie had been off again a couple days ago. We've been talking about getting her back shoes and getting injections, but I wasn't sure what the timeline was and assumed that she was still in limbo. I checked on her just for the hell of it, saw that the back shoes were on, but decided not to push it. With no horse shows in the near future, there's no real reason for me to be on her specifically, and I'm enjoying the opportunity to ride other horses. I gave her some scratches then went to grab Molly.

She's so cute at golden hour!

I've been itching to do some fun polework and flat exercises, and since I have a lot to work on when I ride Molly, I figured the polework would give me something to focus on. Unfortunately, when I went to go set poles up, I realized that the arena was rock hard from the sudden weather shift. Eh, whatever. I tacked her up and decided to go for a trail ride since she's such a reliable trail horse.

I guess it was just a day for unfortunate events because Molly was definitely not her typical self on the trail. Totally tense, hot, and not confident at all. I opted to just walk her back and forth down the street the barn is on because good god, I was not going to risk my life going any farther. I learned that she is mostly impartial to burrowing owls but very terrified of our neighbor's large German Shepard.

This was right before the dog ran up and Molly did a nice, big spin . . .

By the time I got back, my trainer had arrived and we chatted for a bit. At some point, she asked why I decided to ride Molly since I only ride her when Lucie isn't available, and I explained that another boarder had told me Lucie was lame. I was met with a quick "No, she isn't," and a very, uhh, displeased facial expression. I know this particular boarder and my trainer aren't on good terms, but I didn't think it was so bad that someone would lie directly in my face. We both more or less brushed it off and parted ways for the evening. Hopefully my next ride will be on the big, gray demon.