Ride, Drag, Roll, Repeat

We had a lot of rain on Thursday last week, 2.25 inches all on one day. It was our first large storm of the season, and another 2+ inches came in over the weekend. 

He misses the tracks and so do I

I'd mentioned a while back that my arena had been damaged by the rain. So I've become pretty obsessed with preparing it for each storm, and so far it's held up really well this winter! 

When I know that rain is coming, I'll make sure that all the drainage spots in the arena (where the water flows under the kick boards) are clear. It usually involves shoveling sand back into the arena and then shoveling some pathways away from the arena so that the water doesn't get stuck behind the kick boards and start traveling down to that corner rather than out of the arena. 

It's road walking season

Then I drag the arena "hamburger" style, so that any tractor marks that are left go across the arena toward the short side rather than down the arena (I guess "hotdog" style lol). Sometimes even after I roll it, water still finds the drag tracks to wander down. 

And finally, I roll the arena. I've been experimenting a bit with how much rolling is necessary. One pass seems to get 80% of the way there, so if it's a small storm, I stick with that. But for this large storm, the arena got two passes, and that was really great!

Not bad!

He was happy to go down the road

On Friday after that storm, I dragged the arena and it was super rideable!! Way improved from the maybe three days it used to take to recover from a storm like that. So I got TC out to work. 

Side note: he was really good! He actually did very well with his bit flexions that day, fighting me a lot less and doing a lot of releasing. And then the work in the arena was quite good. He seemed to be glad for some entertainment, since the horses get locked in from their pastures and just have access to their (quite large) paddocks. 

I was super impressed with how well the arena held up! Even if the weather changed over the course of the day and it turned out that literally on Saturday morning at 6am, we were set to get another storm. So I dragged the arena, rolled it, and shoveled the sand out from the drainage areas. 

Then on Saturday the weather changed AGAIN so it wasn't going to rain until 3pm. Because I'm so dedicated to this rehab, I trudged down there, dragged the arena, long lined him, then dragged again and sealed it back up. 

I don't mind the roads too much!

Finally Sunday it was too wet to want to work in it! So instead, we walked down the road. It was my first time riding him down the road in a long time, I had been avoiding it due to the mechanical laminitis he had shown in his first x-rays. It was also the first time I had put the bridle on him in a while too! We just walked, no real work, so I don't know how the bit flexions are helping yet. But it felt like just a normal thing to do with him again, which I think we both appreciated. 

Luckily once I came back down on Tuesday, the arena was good enough to use! Pretty good to make it through 4+ inches of rain and only lose one planned riding day.