Roofers shmoofers

Disclaimer: I apologize for the crappy cell phone media. I'm usually riding alone and the only way I can get pics is to set my phone on the rail to video for a couple of minutes. The things I do for my blog readers! ;)

So our covered area is currently under repair this week. It's basically getting a new roof. Of course it is needed, but this means that we can't really use the covered area right now because:

1) There are Amish men walking all over the roof.
2) Their trucks are parked in the arena
3) They randomly drop debris from the ceiling

So unless you have a total death wish, we have all been riding in the outdoor arena this week. That's fine with me, as the resident jump instructor usually has some fun poles set up that I frequently take advantage of.

The only problem is that the Amish roof guys are making some serious noise. I mean, they are taking HUGE (roof size) slabs of roofing/metal and DRAGGING them to the other side of the roof so that can work under them. I can't even describe this obnoxious noise to you.

See what I mean about crappy cell phone photos?!

I decided ... well, might as well ride and see what happens!

Hamps actually surprised me. He has every excuse to be obnoxious. But ... he wasn't. Now granted, there was A LOT of snorting going on. But he stayed with me, and even lit up like a show horse but never got stupid. I LOVE when he is like this! You can sit into him and sort of ride him through the snorting and up comes his poll and his trot gets really big and bouncy. But he never spooked, never even scooted and I would not have blamed him these roofers were fucking loud.

Not in a million years would I have ridden Royale or any idiotic young horse out there tho. Not unless I had a crash vest and a major life insurance policy.

Half steps. You can tell he is tight here. Roofers were straight ahead.
However, thanks roofers for keeping his poll up!

So while we are sort of limited this week in our work since there is only so much you can do on one long side (jumps are in the way everywhere else), we did get some canter pirouette work done. They are coming along - but I need to learn to be more clear with my aids. And of course I took advantage of the snorting and did some half steps. He was a little tight, but understandably so.

Collect .. collect ... turn

Getting there!

I think we are going to aim for a couple of March schooling shows to knock the dust off. I'm not sure what test yet.

And stay tuned for more freestyle posts!