Wednesday Night Riding Academy

On Wednesday night, I left work and headed over to see Lilly for our lesson. It's starting to get dark earlier! Rats. That means half the pictures Brandon took are fine, and half are so murky you can't see a thing!

But this flower is proof that summer is living on!

So you see here at 7ish it is still pretty light out. That's me retrieving my brumby from the pasture for our lesson. She was busy nibbling some hay which I thought might mean she'd be good spirited in the ring. Wednesday night lesson-time is right around the time she usually started nibbling her dinner. I wish I could come earlier, but I really can't.

And look! Rosalie and her mom Jackie were around for Wednesday night lessons! I've missed them the last few weeks with vacation and all. They are so fun to be around. You may notice that Rosalie is on my second favorite horse at the farm.

There's Jackie adjusting all Bella's tack. By the end of the night, we had all been on on Bella zooming around the ring with her! I feel enormous on her; somehow when I'm on her back I feel like a clown in a clown car. That really just adds to the fun. Rosalie also sat on Lilly for a tiny bit. By that time though, Lilly was getting cranky about being away from the hay pile and Rosalie couldn't get her to budge! When I was on Lilly, I did get her into a canter which was OK at first and then slowly crumbled into a tanter. I know it's tanter time when, as we loop around the gate quadrant, she runs right to it. Only I'm direct reining her with vigor so she won't take advantage of me like that. So the run turns into this terrible sideways scramble with Lilly's head defiantly in the air and Brandon fearing for my life from the sidelines. It's just her playing her games with me, trying to be my alpha. Those pictures (which I have never published in this blog) always look ghastly.

There's Brandon (the wednesday night paparazzi) adjusting my stirrups. Now, I said we had all ridden Bella before the night was over. But that does not include Brandon. Getting him onto a horse is like asking a Muslim to love Jesus I think. It just won't happen.

The rest of the pictures from Wednesday were too dark to be bloggable. But you may like this video below which Bill made of me when I was on Bella for the first time last Sunday. I don't ride other horses at all, so I am proud of myself for branching out.