Straightness and Connection

Over the weekend, I had really good rides on TC! 

I rode in the arena on Friday and Monday, and then Saturday we did a trail ride at home and on Sunday he had the day off since I had a prior obligation that kept me away from the barn. 

Requires cookies

Does not require hugs, rider wanted a hug though

My ride right after our trail ride last week (I think Tuesday?) wasn't the best. I think he was tired and just a little above where he needed to be, not really lifting through his shoulders. But he also only had the one day off in between. I did more face pulling than I had been doing and I ended up cutting the ride a little short. We did a trail ride at home on Wednesday and that was great, then he had Thursday off. 

Friday I came out and ended up riding in the middle of the day. After sleeping VERY well for two weeks, I told people I was sleeping well AND I got my hopes up that after eight years of insomnia, I'd finally fixed it; so naturally, I haven't been able to sleep a lick since.

It was a bit hot, so TC and I struggled a little through the warm up. I'm still not quite sure how to approach the warm up with him. I tend to get a little frustrated that he starts out slow (not balky, but like, could you have an ounce more power in any of your gaits) and I'm sure he's frustrated that I want to skip the warm up and jump right into doing work when he's now fifteen years old and has some joint stuff. 

Lots of ranch work this weekend, pastures got
mowed!

And trails got widened/worked on!

I've tried employing what I did with Rico years ago, which is to canter first. But this horse is not a canter horse, if we do that, his canter just feels lethargic and gross. So we trot first, doing big circles and some easy transitions. Then we canter and it's absolutely fine. And then finally when we come back to trot, he seems happy to work. 

Again, acknowledging that being happy to work hasn't really been him at any point of his rides the last few years, so it's great that we can get there!

I can't quite remember exactly what we worked on that day, but most of my work these days are on:

1. Remembering that I know how to ride horses

2. Shoulder-in

3. Counter canter loops

4. Walk to canter

And now reading that back, it sounds like we're schooling Second level. We are not! I just find that these exercises are really good for us. 

Oh hello counter canter!?

Shoulder-in, which we also did on Monday, has been super helpful for getting him to find more stability in his body and finding the diagonal connection from the inside hind leg over his body to the outside rein. Tracking left, he feels pretty good, but tracking right, he really struggles. He wants to come a little above the outside rein and twist his neck. 

Counter canter loops, and on Monday, 20m half circles in counter canter, have been great for the straightness and the connection. He again gets kinda twisty in his body and my enthusiasm for pulling on the left rein means that we go careening sideways in canter sometimes. 

And finally, the walk to canter transition is something he's long been good at and enjoys, but he likes to jump to the outside of the line during the transition, AND it's obvious to me when he does it AND I'm a better canter rider than trot. So I figure that I can help him find straightness in the transition and that this will help us find straightness in the canter in general. 

So a friend told me that putting a fake
dragonfly on your horse keeps flies
away and I think it's so funny (and I 
kind of think it works?)

And he's just happy?

The remembering how to ride horses thing keeps happening. I haven't had that many lessons since 2020, and even then I was mostly riding alone. Which is FINE I was a professional. Now I am not, I'm deep in amateurdom after years of not really riding. I'm also not nearly as fit as I was before and am super out of practice. 

On Friday, I remember going along thinking, wow, he's kinda down in his shoulder, bummer. And then a circle or two later I was like OH, what if I... asked him not to be. And I put my leg on and kinda bumped him up under himself and he said yes! And then it all went so so much better. 

Then on Monday, and if my Pivo hadn't been such an asshole, I'd have a hilarious video, because I was trotting and kind of lamenting about how unstable I felt in the trot, like he kept falling out in this one place and I was just letting him do it and reacting to it rather than preventing it. And I think I said out loud right near the camera "oh my god I could use my abs for this" and again the ride went much better. 

Remember how you have abs?

So much reach with his hind end now

Luckily I find this just hilarious. I'm truly enjoying experiencing both sides of the coin. I put so much pressure on myself to ride well and learn as much as I could and be USDF Gold Medalist Megan. And now I get to be an amateur, and I'm learning SO much about myself and about horses and about dressage from this other side. Maybe I should write down what the differences feel like. 

Anyway, what it means is that I can remain in really good spirits about the whole thing. When I forget how to ride horses it just cracks me up, like people used to pay me to do this and now I'm like oh woops, why is my hand over there? How long has it been like that? Have I always done that?

Truly I'm having the time of my life no matter what is going on with my riding. 

Achieving Our Goals

TC and I continue to have just the best rides. It warmed up a bit this last week and even though TC got a little quiet in the heat, he still came out ready to work. Even if he insists on me dragging him into the arena each time. 

I set up my Pivo a couple of times because I'm really struggling to figure out what he looks like vs what he feels like. That's always been the case with him - he'll feel really connected and he's actually super short in the neck, or he'll feel off the bit but he's actually pleasantly in front of the vertical. 

The happy ears are the best part!

Still has a ridiculous tail

The first video I took led me to shorten the reins quite a bit in the second video and actually put the horse together. I think I mentioned it a little bit ago, I kind of forget how to ride right now. Between being super out of shape, kind of primed to think that anything he does is fine as long as it's not balking, and not having many lessons in the past six years, I'm a bit of a mess. 

But there was something about the second ride where I just... remembered what the actual hell I was supposed to do. 

I think it was the canter. I've always been a much better canter rider than trot rider and because his balking happened so much going into canter, I didn't get a lot of time riding the canter poorly, because we just weren't doing it. 

Because of that, when I put him into canter and he slowed a little, I bumped him with his leg and he went. And after that, I was like cool, I can put my mechanic into him then, and that's what we did. 

He seemed to be really happy about it! I think he's figuring out that he can actually canter again, and I'm sure that me putting my mechanic into him helped him find his balance and straightness a bit more. 

Excuse me? I had no idea what to do with this

This was more the balance we were in, which is
also great and more appropriate for his fitness level

The lateral work is a bit tough for us right now, I know we need to deal with that, but I've decided that it'll be Kate's problem. So rather than work too much at it, I decided to do something I was good at, which was to put him on quarterline in a bit of a shoulder-fore and do some walk to canter transitions.

He's quite crooked in canter like a lot of them are and this is one of the exercises that I think helped the most. He's pretty motivated to do a walk to canter for some reason (I think he thinks they are fun and very special) and will find his way into canter even if I'm blocking a lot of the directions he'd rather go. So all that is left over is to canter in a straight line. 

And damn, it worked so well! He really sat down and was able to strike off into a much better quality canter. 

I'm so impressed with him

Don't worry, I got a new phone so the screenshot
quality is about to get much better

The day after we did these canter transitions, I decided to do the same thing in the walk to trot transition, which was much harder for him. But he still tried SO hard at them and we got some really good moments of him picking up trot from a bit of a shoulder-fore!

I negotiated with him and let him school over some poles in between, so that kept him happy I think. He did keep trying to guess at what we were doing, so I had to keep telling him he was wrong, which he doesn't love. But he could take even thirty seconds to consider what I am asking him to do... 

I can actually half halt him now

He feels so good!

Again I'm so tickled that we have something real to work on!! 

I remember having a conversation with Kate about my goals with TC. Like I can't expect him to come back to work as if nothing happened, zip back up the levels, take him out at Fourth level and then move him to the PSG. He is fifteen years old this year and I'm also not really in a place where I can or even want to focus on climbing the levels again. 

I do love riding his canter

I came up with these goals:

1. I want to be able to ride him and actually work on things, not just fight with him about being forward

2. I want to keep him fit enough to feed more and go on trail rides/do fun things (like obstacle clinics)

3. I want him to look nice while I ride him so I can take video and not be like ew why does he look like that

And I think I have achieved all of those things! We'll see how things go through this summer because that's always a tough time for us. But I never would have thought that we'd get this far even during the time of year where things are easy for us. Onward and upward!

Back on the Trails

It has been quite some time since I took TC out on the trails at our local trail facility. Honestly I can't remember the last time I took him off the property for a trail ride. 

Happy ears!

I'm super lucky that we have a very convenient hillside to ride on at the ranch. I can do one loop in 25 minutes and two loops in 45 minutes and it's quite a bit of climbing. Because of that, I stopped needing to haul him out weekly for hill work to keep his stifle functional, but I still would take him out for longer rides and for fun. 

That is, until we went through everything we went through. I've tried to bring him back a few times, but the one facility that is my default trail facility has a lot of hills, and I've not been able to get him fit enough to feel like I can take him there and do the full loop that we do. Honestly, I've also not wanted to take the time to do it either, I really lost a lot of motivation to do much riding with all the issues we were having.

So much fun

On Sunday though, I decided it was time to start getting him used to hauling out and trail riding again. And it was so much fun! 

We got to the facility and there was some kind of fancy photoshoot happening with a girl in a beautiful dress and a friesian all dressed up with matching ribbons in his mane. TC unloaded and was surprisingly quiet, I thought he might think that we were there for a photoshoot with the way he was watching them. 

The mustard is kind of crazy

The bay area really can be beautiful

A little boy came over and seemed very interesting in petting TC. His grandmother asked if they could and I said yes, TC loves kids. And then the closer the kid was brought to TC, the more TC eyed him and the more the boy cried. Poor TC, denied a photoshoot and friendship. 

I tacked him up and hopped on and he was so so good immediately. Again, this is our normal trail facility and he's been ridden there since he was a baby. But it was a bit cold and windy and outside of the fancy friesian, we were the only horse there. We marched out to the gate on a loose rein and I very stupidly put on my instagram how chill he was. 

Love these trails

Because after that he started screaming and showing me all the stuff that was different since he'd gone there two years ago. Like yeah, they added a sign there, I'm sorry, I should have let them know not to change the place at ALL in the years since you have been here. 

But it was still a super pleasant ride, just like when he was a baby, if he was getting a bit unruly (and these days that's just whinnying and like, walking with a lot of huffiness), he gets pointed up a hill. 

I thought this was so funny

Happy boy (mostly)

I wasn't sure how much of the trail I actually wanted to do, I figured I'd see how he felt. He was going to have Monday off regardless and he's been doing both loops at home, plus some extra work on the tracks, adding up to about 75 minutes of light to moderate hill work. This was about 30 minutes more than that and a bit more climbing. 

He got a little over halfway still with enough lung capacity to scream and stare aggressively through the mustard at people, so I decided to do the whole loop. 

It's so gorgeous there

 

We got to the end of the ride with him feeling a bit tired, but still not so tired he didn't try to take me on a second loop. He got to meet two women who wanted to pet him and so I said yes and he got some attention. And he only had one minor spook at the end when two cyclists came bombing down the hill behind him and slammed on their brakes, skidding directly behind TC. 

He zipped forward about two strides before I turned around. The cyclists took that to mean they should race by us and he handled that just fine, but I called after them that like hey, you should probably ask the rider before doing that. Luckily he is the best boy and even without seeing a bike for actual years, he didn't care. 

Unsure of going back home

Tired boy after a trail ride

Finally I got him back to the trailer with a lot of protesting from him, he really didn't want to leave. When he got home, Rico was very happy to see him, and TC rolled, grazed a bit, and took a nap standing in his porch next to Rico. 

I was super pleased with the whole ordeal! He was stellar and best of all, we made it all the way around for the first time in YEARS. I'm so grateful to have this horse back. 

Relearning

After years and years of not really being able to ride my horse, I can suddenly ride my horse, and it's kind of a problem!

Not only am I unbelievably out of shape, I low key haven't really ridden seriously in years at this point. So much of my riding in the past few years has been focused on really basic things - can I get the horse to go forward, can I get the horse to go in what appears to be a straight line, and can I get the horse anywhere close to being on the bit. 

He just felt so complicated to ride, so a lot of our rides were breaking things down, keeping things simple, working on exercises that were like... transitions, figure-8s, serpentines. 

Loving my tracks!

Suddenly, with the saddle, everything became SO easy. He just went to the contact, he just went in a straight line, he just went in general (forward). Everything we'd been slowly working on for years became easy. And now I have no idea what to even do with him! 

Luckily the first day we tried the saddle, Kate had come out to teach me on him and also gave her student a bit of an intro lesson on him. Then I had her student take a lesson with Kate before we left for Ireland so that she could feel confident riding him while we were gone. And then I took a lesson with Kate last weekend. Kate to the rescue. 

Road walking is always fun

I'll probably go into more detail in another post about the specific exercises since we're still working on them, but she said a few things about TC that I wanted to talk more about since it's really more relevant than the actual exercises. 

Now that everything is so easy, what do we work on? Well, one of the first things that came up in both lessons is that TC is a very *flexible* horse without being a very *maneuverable* horse. Her student's horse is somewhat the opposite, and I've had a lot of those - a horse who you can put almost anywhere, but who struggles a bit with the suppleness. One of my old client's horses comes to mind, where he was kind of a ball of tension sometimes, I could put him into any movement I wanted, but he struggled to relax his back a bit. 

TC is a bit of a gloopy mess of a horse, but then you go to put your leg on to move him around and he's like oh... no thanks. And it's like, bro, you will contort your body to fling your shoulder right and your haunches left all day long... until I ask you to bring your haunches to the left, and then that's difficult? 

So we talked a lot about, how do we use lateral work to increase spinal stability rather than to destabilize him. It makes sense, he's already a little unstable, then I push him MORE unstable and he says look, let's not make things WORSE. 

My arena doesn't feel as small when
I can actually steer the horse

The other thing she said to her student about him that made me laugh was that TC likes to be right, but he hates to have to solve a problem. So his way of doing things is to just throw everything at you that he thinks you might want in rapid succession. Her student rode all sorts of weird stuff on him, including a lot of canter transitions (including counter canter from walk, so talented) before he finally was wrong enough to listen to her. 

I have a habit, especially these days, of accepting almost anything as long as it isn't balking or running sideways. So he's used to being right and not having to solve many problems right now. 

The big takeaway I snagged was that I need to balance this a little better and let him problem solve at his own pace, which is usually slower than I want. I think hustling him through things has made him skip the problem solving step and just guess. So I get to work on my impatience with him. 

I dunno if I've posted this weird bridle
yet but we got this too

It's been really great to have things to actually work on. I find myself more excited to ride now than I have in years. And it's fun to finally start seeing him put muscle on. Slowly but surely I am getting my horse back. We still have so far to go! And we are definitely in the time of year where things do start going better for us. I still think that we won't truly know until the end of summer how things are actually going for us. But things are going better right now than they have in years even during this time of year, and we've had some hot days. 

We have a fair amount in our arsenal left that we can do. We can inject his neck, his stifles, his SI. I can have Kate's student ride him more (to take me out of the equation since I'm more emotional about it all). I can give him more alfalfa or grain. We could switch barns. Lots of options! 

But I'm feeling really good about things. I don't need him to come back to Third level. I just want to work on things again, take lessons, go on trail rides, have fun again. And so far it seems like we're on the right track for doing that!

Thirty, Flirty, and Thriving

Rico is doing so well this spring. Every year I have him is a gift, and I felt especially nostalgic on his 30th birthday this year. 

<3

Still the best of friends!

I got him when he was just barely turning 9 years old and I was 18 years old. Now he is 30 years old and this year I turn 40, my gosh where does the time actually go. I love so much that we have gotten to spend the past 21 years together.  I'm so grateful to be able to give him this amazing retirement after all he's given me. 

The big 3-0!

Pasture delivery

He was stoked

Look at that nose!

Closing in on the Answer - The Saddle

Alright, I kind of went over briefly how much better TC is doing but I wanted to dedicate an entire post to it. 

Tracks are a little overgrown but still
remain my favorite thing I've done at
the ranch in a while

Essentially, things somewhat took a turn for the worse in March just because of the winter and my travel schedule. That's totally fine, I wasn't too bummed about it, but it made me realize that I need to give TC more consistency when I am out of town, so I decided to try to find someone to ride TC during those times. 

Basically what happened was that he came out a bit lame one day on his left hind, which is normal when he has been out of work, and especially if it has been raining and he's been locked on his paddock (which is 50' long, it's not a small paddock, but he's used to moving around a lot in his pasture). Normally, I give him a couple days off with some bute on board, then I kinda just push him through it and add hill work. Typically he's better within the week. But this time, pushing him through it resulted in him feeling WORSE later on in rides vs better. So rather than just taking a little longer to warm up, he was getting progressively more uneven throughout the ride. 

So that warranted starting our rehab over a bit and dropping from 15-20 minutes of trot back to 30 second trot sets adding up to like 5 minutes of trot. 

Hill work: required

Meanwhile, Kate and I were talking saddles. She learned SO much at her Stubben training and I was in Uruguay in the back of a van being schlepped across the country when she downloaded most of it to me. It blew my mind, specifically the following with regards to TC:

- The shorter tree points of my previous saddle (not the old Custom, but the non-Custom custom one I'd ordered a few years ago) definitely were what destroyed his shoulder. He was going well in fall 2021 and then that saddle came through and cut into his shoulder blade. Poor boy. That made the balking much worse. 

- My current saddle, the Pegasus, is fine, but it is still probably a bit too much pressure around the withers, TC has humongous withers (not super tall but just a lot of surface area) and most saddles sit way too close to his spine/withers. When there is pressure on the sides of the wither, there is a bundle of nerves that gets crushed and this causes horses to want to stop. It's the same bundle of nerves that stallions bite when they breed mares. 

- There is a bundle of nerves probably right under where my girth lands on his side, which can also be irritating to him. He's always been funny about girths, he wants his girth quite tight, and I wonder if this is why.

- TC is actually quite narrow, I feel like he's been in trees that were too wide for him a lot of his life. This can also put pressure on the wither area, which again causes horses to want to stop. 

He loves an audience

A few weeks ago, Kate was in town and I wanted to kill two birds with one stone, so she brought a client's saddle out AND one of her advanced riders. We put the saddle on TC and I took the first half of the lesson, then her rider got on and we did a quick evaluative ride so that when I was in Ireland, she could ride TC for me so that he didn't get a week off. 

I got on TC in the saddle and immediately felt a huge difference in the contact, TC was RIGHT there, which was a really good sign. He's never just... in the contact. He's been a really complicated horse in the contact for a long time, he struggles to reach evenly to both reins, he likes to retract the neck, and he drops through the base of his neck quite a bit. Except not anymore, because apparently ALL of that was caused by saddle fit. And it's not like he hasn't been in well fitted saddles (at least, fit professionally) for most of his life. 

We picked up trot and he was quite happy to do so without contorting his body. Just a week before, I was lamenting to Kate that he was getting stuck in a new corner, balking a bit, but in the new saddle, he was happy to step right through the corner.

It's just EASY what the hell

We put her rider on and he was... so unbelievably smug. First of all, he loves an audience, and second, he loves a kid. She's an adult, but a young adult, and I could tell from his facial expression that he thought his dreams were coming true, that she was going to be his new kid (young adult). His ears were pressed very far forward as they do when he is excited, so far forward that they were almost facing each other. 

And Kate had her ask him for some more advanced movements than I had in a while - shoulder-in, half pass, haunches-in - and TC was definitely having fun taking her through the movements. It was almost like he was trying to be super duper professional with her, like if I asked for half pass, he'd have been like, seriously? we haven't done that in ages, jeez. But when she asked, he was like oh yes, half pass, I am very trained and you are just a small child (young adult) and I will show you how. She is riding at the PSG level by the way, he's such a mansplainer. 

When we got done, I led him back to the barn, but instead, he stuck really close to her, as if to say "okay cool, when is the vet check? can you take me home today or do I have to wait?" ready to totally abandon me. Bro, I raised you!

Look how happy he is

I was really excited about the saddle, but obviously it's owned by a client of Kate's, so it left with the new love of TC's life (her student and just generally an audience) and I immediately messaged the local Stubben rep, who happened to be in town the next day!!

She came out and I got to try a few of the saddles. Again, TC went SO well in them, but I was really having trouble deciding between them. I told her that I was a little nervous to commit right away for a couple of reasons. 

1. TC is hopefully (and can confirm this is true 2.5 weeks later) going to positively explode with muscle now that he can move properly, so ordering a saddle when he's at his most undermuscled feels like a recipe for having to bring the fitter out a ton and maybe him outgrowing a tree.

2. I'm not sure what will happen with his gaits and how much support I'm going to need from the saddle if he is going to get his big gaits back. His trot and canter have definitely gotten smaller over the years just because he can't support the bigger gaits. I was worried about ordering a saddle with a smaller block and then a few months later being like... cool I can't sit these gaits anymore.

Luckily, Stubben really does seem to want to do what is best for horse and rider, so I was left with a demo saddle for as long as it takes me to figure out the answers to those questions. My goal is to get him back to full work and start to sit his trot. That will allow me to buy a saddle for a fit, somewhat well muscled horse (or at least we'll know what direction we're going in) AND to make sure that I give myself the support I need to handle his hopefully enormous gaits. 

Look how good he looks!

I think I've done a good job not letting myself go down the "if only I had..." rabbit hole. Maybe it'll come later. But I did the best that I could with the information I had at the time. 

I've spent a lot of time thinking about how much you can just trust a saddle fitter (or any equine professional, or professional in general), like they can be a good saddle fitter, and STILL the saddle might not *actually* work BEST for the horse. And it's hardest when the horse is going pretty well in the saddle - the concept of like, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

But at the same time, there's that other saying where like, good is the enemy of great. I think both of these little sayings get to me at work - I really do like my job, it gives me a lot of freedom (unlimited vacation, which I've been taking advantage of this year, I think I'm at 5 weeks of vacation so far and it's only April lol) and I enjoy what I do and the people I do it with, but I also know that if I really push myself, I could improve my salary quite a bit if I moved companies. Luckily they sensed me getting squirmy so they promoted me so I don't have to revisit this for a while. So I get to think about it with TC instead!

Basically since the saddle situation was mostly pretty good over the years, I didn't really put a huge amount of weight into it as the primary driving force behind his balking. But it turns out, it might be most of the answer. Only time will tell!

Progress!

WOW I am very behind on this blog. 

Essentially, in January, I spent three weeks in Uruguay, then got home and was extremely distracted by processing all my photos, working on the journal I kept while there, doing my real life job, working with TC, and I signed up for a Spanish class because being down there for so long and not speaking the language annoyed me. 

It was also rainy, I went on three more trips - in February I went to Michigan to visit Kate, in March I went to Channel Islands National Park, and I just got back from Ireland. I've been so busy and so happy, but the blog took a back seat. 

Cute boy

However, a lot has happened that I want to share! So I will set up some posts to catch things up and hopefully I'll stay in town for long enough to continue writing on this blog. 

Last we left off, Sundance wasn't doing so well. I'm super happy to report that Sundance's treatment went super well! He gained the weight back and looks better than ever now. He is off the steroids and maintaining his weight, and he's now slowly transitioning back to hay after an all-pellet diet for the past 3+ months. We plan to start riding him when he's fully back on hay and doing well, there's no rush to put him back to work. 

Celebrated TC's fifteenth birthday!

TC is doing fabulous. We had a bit of a tricky winter - with all the traveling, an offsite for work, and the rain, he ended up having a flare up of his stifle issue. It was an especially weird one, where he actually got worse with work. Normally a trail ride or two and kinda pushing him through his work with a lot of walk breaks makes him better in a week. This time he had to have a bit of time off and a lot of walking. He recovered though, but it set us back in terms of his fitness. 

Because of that, I decided to see whether one of Kate's students could ride him for me while I'm gone. She's a fabulous rider, riding her own horse at the Prix St George level, and is riding horses for a few people in the area. 

Coincidentally, the week before we left for Ireland, Kate was in town, so I had Kate come out to teach me and bring her student so that we could give her a bit of a boost in riding him.

Ireland was AMAZING, more on that later

In ADDITION, when I was in Michigan, Kate had me ride Flounder (missed him!! even though he bullied me a lot when I rode him) in her collection of Stubben saddles since she is now a rep. I really loved them, and so she ended up bringing one of her students' Stubbens out for TC on the day we had the lesson.

I was FLOORED. I felt like I had my horse back, not even the one I was riding in 2020, but the horse I bought. Then seeing her student ride him and seeing him curious about his work and happily doing things he hadn't in years (like they worked on half pass lol), I was super sold. I texted the local rep and arranged for her to come out the next day.

She came out and again I was just floored by how good TC felt in the saddles. He just felt trained, and so it became really obvious that at least some of this is a saddle issue. 

Trust me when I say he has put on a TON of muscle
in like... two weeks, what the hell?

Luckily, she was able to leave a saddle with me that fits him pretty well so that I could try it for some time. I am also getting another one to try. The plan is for me to get him fit in one of those saddles, then I can order one. I loved how much they seemed to be willing to let me ease into the idea of ordering him yet another custom saddle. But I'm truly blown away the more I ride in it so I'm mostly just waiting for him to pack on muscle since we may end up being able to get a slightly wider tree for him. 

I think this is the first time I've really thought I might get my horse back. We still have the summer to get through, this is the time of year where he feels the best. But he's never felt THIS good at this time of year. Anyway, I'm hopeful!

Always happy on the trails

I think I'll set up a couple more posts, I have more info on TC (we had a lesson!) and then more on the horse aspect of going to Ireland because it was SO interesting!