Unfairly Unfit

Or so I appear to be as my legs are saddle sore after only a week without horse-riding...what is up with that?!
I guess muscle memory doesn't apply to my body :-p

My body failings aside I had three wonderful spins on my girls this weekend; I rode both girls yesterday & Nancy this morning. The reason for my lack of saddle time is I was away last weekend; so no riding, had to catch up on what girls did on Tuesday and as I hadn't been able to turn them out at lunchtime due to appartment-meetings - their stables were manky so I cleaned them as they spun on the walker. Wednesday the osteo managed to come so two days rest was perscribed for girlies to get used to manipulations.

So, long story short; Saturday was my return to the saddle. I started with Kika and managed to snag some alone time in our favoured arena. Warmed up nicely with w/t/c and kept things simple with circles, changes of rein etc after  the osteo fixed her. She was very good, no longer locking her neck & tossing her head - calling in osteo was obviously the right call although I do need to count my pennies and get saddle fitter back for both girls. The saddles aren't awful (Kika WILL let me know when it no longer fits) but they do leave a bit to be desired :-(

Nancy was next, the main arena was free (woohoo - full back wall of mirrors) & L opted to ride her mare at the same time - yay for corrective pointers. N had one spook when we were near entrance end of arena and the wind whistled through rafters...I don't know if things are after coming loose or is wind just worse this year than previous 3 years I've been here as I have never heard it whirr like it does now with the wind - weird.
There were two other riders besides myself & L, one of them I have bemoaned before as she is one of the most selfish users of an arena at the barn - so much so that if she is riding in an arena before I start I will ride in a busier arena to avoid having to try to manoeuvre around her. Talk about getting too close for comfort! I am just glad Nancy is so cool & calm.
The ride wasn't as good as it could have been as I was distracted trying not to knock other riders like ten-pin-bowling-skittles with my tank horse .. I did learn that we have a much better set of brakes now than last year as we managed to avoid two collissions with other rider - who is now also being added to ny avoid-shating-arena-with-list. Gosh I sound really whiney & complicated! I really am not a difficult person to ride with (or at least i don't think so) I'd be better able to relax if I felt like the people riding at the same time as me respect distances and pay attention to other riders. I don't think that is asking too much; is it?!

I got another spin in on Nancy this morning while L schooled Kika. We had hoped to do a jump school, but sadly those arenas were crazy busy so we went for the large empty one and hacked around :-D My spin was much more productive on N this morning, we didn't do anything fancy, just worked through the basics of w/t/c; circles, changes of rein each time concentrating on maintaining tempo, balance and contact. Things are going so much better now that I remember to release my grip on her face and we get back on track so much smoother. It's the little things in life!

L & I then cleaned up our hay storage area at the turnout to prepare for a new bale; we dumped all the excess stuff that had fallen off the bale down the back of the turn out for the girls to work through at their leisure. I am on my way home to bring the little darlings in.
As always, I apologise for lack of images to accompany wy waffle - sadly as I'm the photo obsessed one no one takes pictures of me ;-)