Saturday's weather was very iffy. We weren't sure if it was going to rain. We knew it was not going to warm up. Around 2pm we asked our neighbor if we could use his arena. This took the risk out of getting rained on.
I took some cones over and laid them out and we worked on some of the exercises on RWC 3. Ranae's horse, Dusty, was full of beans and kicked up a couple of times. Ranae made him hustle his hindquarters around every time he did and I think he got the message.
While she was doing her thing, we tried two-tracking and shoulder in/shoulder out. Trying to get the feel and timing down on these is quite the trick. I could get Jessie to move, getting her to soften and move was another story. We kept working at it hoping the light would magically come on.
We did manage to lope our ten minutes. We did some patterns around the cones, the clover exercise and some squares in all directions. The ten minutes doesn't seem nearly as long as the first time we went under the timer. Trying to get Jessie to soften at the lope is a chore. When I pick up on the reins she tends to speed up. Again, put that on the list of things to work on.
After the loping we did some fence exercises to cool down. We also worked on side-passing without the help of the fence. The arena belongs to an old roping heeler and he has a chute set up on one end. We got on each side of the chute and took off like we were roping a ...a ..., well, let's just we were a couple of steps slower than a statue.
Sunday warmed up a little but the clouds were still around. We went out in the afternoon and got sprinkled on a little bit. We did our loping again and I worked on the shoulder in/out and two-tracking again. We got back just before a good-sized storm came in blowing wind and dropping almost an 1/8" of rain.
Anytime we can get two rides in on a December weekend is a good thing.
