Night Rider

While I appreciate having a safe and clean place to board, it's pretty rustic. I'm good with sacrificing rider amenities if the pony is happy, which she is, but it does create some challenges. This time of year is the hardest. It's dark by the time I'm done work, and more often than not it's raining too.  Midge's paddock and shelter area doesn't have any lighting, and the barn is not set up to groom or tack up inside. So, once I catch Midge, I need to bring her out front of the barn where there's a couple of motion sensor lights, and tack up there. It's not too bad, but it admittedly stinks when it's dark and pouring rain!

Not so bad tacking up here in the daylight

Modest shelter on the back of the barn, but clean and dry and comes with a giant paddock of her own. No lights, though!

Next, we head out for a 10min ride down a very dark rural road. Our reflective gear is working great, and I've added a headlamp now too. So far the drivers have been super respectful of us. I always make sure to thank them for slowing down to pass. Midge is obviously a star, because the road passes some farmland, then a small scrap metal place and car repair place, then through a forested park and farmers market venue, and finally to our riding club grounds - it's not really a peaceful country hack on the best of days. The other night it was super windy and rainy and stuff at the metal place was blowing over and crashing down in the dark, poor Midge, but she still walked past like a trooper.

Headlamp is actually pretty bright!

And, most shockingly of all, once we arrive at the indoor, she's been nothing but fantastic! She's quite up and spooky of late, but she'll happily channel the energy, and she actually wants to get out and work right now. Is this my pony? If so, perhaps the indoor really is magical?

We've been making great progress in our counter canter departs. I no longer need to exaggerate my aids when asking, and she's not getting flustered any more. She totally understands what I'm asking now and will happily pick up either lead from walk. She's not balanced enough to counter canter reliably around the short side of the indoor, but we can work up to that outside with bigger loops and sweeping turns. I've also made progress with simple changes through walk and trot, changing as close to the centerline as possible on either a serpentine or figure eight pattern. Finally, wow do I have a lot of trot right now! The big cob trot is back and I'm loving it. Going back and reestablishing forward on a longer contact has worked wonders. I'm starting to play again a bit with containing and collecting it, just a few strides at a time, and she seems to "get it" and is game to try...the whole slowing down and sucking back thing seems to have gone away and she's pushing and keeping a steady tempo all on her own.

G must have taken these, because I found one the blurry riding pic from the paragraph above, plus about 20 various photos of Midge's nose, like this one,  on my phone just now. Love that he tries :)