Spinning My Wheels

 The challenging weather of last week stayed with us until yesterday. A better person with more hours in the day would have shrugged their shoulders and trailered down to the indoor arena, but it seems like the days are just slipping away into a haze of work, work travel, property improvement and house renovations. I've spent more time at the building supply store than I have riding this December. It's felt like in the last couple of weeks especially I have been busier than ever with multiple projects on the go, but very little quantitative progress to show. 

Some snow flowers for you

Never fear though, Sophie has been kept as busy as I can keep her - going for walks, longeing, or just getting turned out to run around in the snow all day. The last of the ice and snow finally melted on Friday, then we had a big storm come through and everything was well and truly saturated with rain so our world is currently a grey and muddy mess. 

Where did my ring go? ;)

Since I do still have intentions of riding regularly this winter, I had an appointment Sunday to get both ponies fitted for boots (Scoot Boots, if you're curious) which was highly amusing from a Sophie standpoint. She's so fussy that sometimes as a rider I get demoralized at how much I seem to bother her, then we have days like yesterday where I'm freshly reminded it's not all on me, pony has some very strong feelings. After much fussing and stamping and foot shaking and sneaky attempts to grab them with her teeth and rip them off...we got the front boots fitted. We did the back ones too, since thankfully she's civilized enough to not be dumb when there's someone handling her feet. Anyway, we did it, that's done...and boots on your hooves are apparently more offensive than boots on your legs (which for the record are also very much disliked and itchy).

The interesting thing was when I put her away, she spent that half hour after running around having a big tantrum and acting like she still had the offensive boots attached to her feet. So, obviously, I am ordering her some front boots for Christmas ;) Historically speaking there's a pretty good chance that she'll tolerate them. She has strong initial feelings about any new tack, blankets, boots, riders, but normally given a bit of time and some adjustments she's OK.

Oh look, another project delivered. The big rocks are for the ring edging, and a couple of garden landscaping projects.

Circling back to the property and house improvements, we got the vacant lot beside the house cleared and mowed (in a wind/rain storm in December, lol - the neighbours definitely are going to think we're nuts) and ready for ponies again, which feels good. We're working with such a small space (just over an acre) every little bit that's fenced and horse safe feels like a big win. The house remains in a state of disarray. I really need to rent a floor sander but they're booked solid, so I've been mostly removing and changing some of the built in cabinetry to suit our new office and living room plans (no worries it wasn't original anyway!), prepping and painting walls and generally attempting to get it halfway habitable for the new year. I'm spending most evenings there working and I'm still guilty of taking breaks just to enjoy the novelty of watching the horses out the windows.

Christmas lights were a really easy win to make the house cheery and look like someone cares.