Stellar Surprise

My family are awesome and sneakily organised for my aunt/godmother/Nancy's breeder, her husband & kids to come for a surprise visit for a week. I had hoped to sneak in a lesson with my aunt, but we got up to too many other things. We did go for a tour of the stables & they loved having a poke around getting ideas and seeing the two monsters again.

Fancy Nancy this evo

Also surprising is that I have managed to log more saddle time recently. The family arrived Monday evening and surprised me at the stable as i was finishing up with the girls. Nancy had spun on the walker for her day off while i lunged Kika in the pessoa.
Tuesday, PL rode Nancy while Kika & I got reacquainted under saddle. She was grand but looky at a drip falling from the ceiling 😬 which lead to some shenanigans when we cantered - but one dolphin leap and no flailing is a win in my book as she pretty much settled down again after if you discount her speedy gonzalez/road-runner canter on the next transition...but I chalked that up the shenanigans hangover. Thursday my cousin & I went for a delightful stroll in the woods - see pic below, before a family outing to the WWI battlefield memorial @ Verdun in France

Tandem trail riding ftw

PL rode Saturday & the barefoot trimmer came to tidy up their tootsies. Sunday I had hoped to sneak in a lesson on each from my aunt but it wasn't to be as we toured the city and then watched the Olympics SJ so still horsey *ahem* 🙊
Monday PL had her lesson as it was a bank holiday here so yay long weekend & she rode again Tuesday evening. Wednesday was a day off for Nancy & she repaid my generosity by breaking out of the field and proving my suspicions right about the lack of power from the fencer. 😲
Luckily a fellow boarder happened to be walking her dogs, witnessed her bid to escape & called the stable hands to help fix everything back up. This is after, Monday evening when the pair of them busted the fencing on the "winter" turnout which i actually also use in the summer afternoons to offer them shade on hot days as their summer turnout field has none.

Worse photo of me, but Nancy is still cute

PL had to cancel this evening so I got to have a go and see if I could put some of my Olympic dressage inspiration to good use...the answer was sorta 😶
The two nice photos shared in this post were taken at the start of my spin so it started off nicely but then we hit a bit of a rocky patch after some canter. This is not unusual and I was perhaps a little mean starting with canter work on her harder side while she had enough pep in her step/energy to somewhat carry herself. The arena had also been recently watered; I'm not sure how I keep managing to ride in it soggy at the moment. It is deff not Nancy's favourite type of footing, but after plenty walk breaks and mini-circles to re-engage Nancy's brain at the trot we finished with some lovely floaty trot followed by a stroll and a catch up chat with a friend around the property 😈