I'm Back

I am alive!  It's been over a month since I last blogged.  To be honest, I've had to face the fact that because of my arm, I can't ride like I used to, and it was a lot more upsetting than I expected.  On top of that, there are more problems with my wrist so I find out in February if I need a thrid surgery, and then add family issues on top of that, I've been hiding in my room for the past month and a bit.

I've finally crawled out of my hole and I think, or hope, that things are looking up.  For the riding thing, I've just had to re-learn how to ride, taking into account what my arm can and cannot do.  It's not pretty but it's working.  Socks has been great, when I ride with my right hand it just takes the slightest touch to get her to do what I want.  And Socks is now sporting some new clothes.

It's a really bad picture but I wasn't expecting to get her a blanket yesterday so I didn't bring my camera.  We went out to the tack store to pick up some sweet feed and figured that we might as well check out the price on winter blankets.  We decided this year that we wouldn't mind having winter blankets on them, not really to keep them warm, they do that well enough on their own, but because we ride them more and it'd be nice to keep the snow off their backs so it doesn't melt and get them soaked when we bring them in.

Well the price of the blankets at the tack store last night was a good hundred dollars cheaper than anywhere else we've looked, and better quality.  T had previously tried blankets on Socks to find out what size she was, so we ended up walking away with a blanket for her.  Jimmy will have to wait until next month to get his blanket.

It's a Goliath blanket with 1200 Denier count.  T really stressed getting a decent Denier count to us.  Socks took to wearing it a lot better than I expected, considering she's never really worn a blanket before.  That said, the test will be on Thursday when I see her next, to see if she still likes it after wearing it for a few days.

Artemis has been great.  She's been ponied while wearing the saddle and we've been working a lot on standing at the mounting block with the saddle on.  We've also been working a lot on respect because we've run into a few issues.  One helpful exercise we've done is put her in a stall and work with her in there.  She's not supposed to move until she get's the okay from us, this includes if there's food in the stall.  She's a quick learner, I can leave the stall door open and start to walk away and 9 times out of 10 she'll stand (this is not something I do when there's other people in the barn, just in case she does walk out of the stall). 

She's also very talented at backing up.  When I'm leading her I don't need to tug on the lead rope or poke her in the chest to back her up, all I need to do is back up myself and she'll keep going until I stop.

I'll try to take pictures of them on Sunday, when it's light outside, since it's been a while since I posted good, recent pictures of them.