Sick Day

The title says all. I woke up this morning with a sore throat. I would have stayed home from school, but today was my Gambler day. My family has a rule: "if you are too sick for school you are too sick for anything you want to do." I can't let the horse down just because I'm feeling a little under the weather. So I braved the school day.

When I got out to the barn I set up the arena. Then I went through the tricky task of getting Gambler into the arena without letting Kezi out of the pasture. It's actually not as hard as I thought it was going to be. Although the arena connects directly to the pasture, I usually lead Gambler through the barn to get to the arena so he doesn't every try to run through the fence back into the pasture (he has done this before). So I led Gambler up to the door of the barn and used the rope to chase Kezi just a few feet away. While she was walking away, I tossed the rope over Gambler's neck and let him into the barn. He of course made a beeline for the grain bucket (which to his dismay was empty) in his stall. Ta da! One horse in, one horse out.

Once I had him out in the arena, I groomed him and put his bell boots on. Then we started our warm up. Gambler was a little edgy because of the wind, so he did canter earlier than I usually let him. I quickly brought him back to a walk. Today he responded so well. He was trotting on nothing but the voice cue. But then I noticed something was off. Literally, Gambler was a little bit sore. It was so slight that I thought maybe I was imagining it. So I took the boots off and felt down his legs. Nothing was hot or swollen. I picked out his hooves (I probably should have done that first), but there wasn't anything in them. Mom and I agreed that he was off, but it was really slight. So far, nothing to worry about. Obviously, I didn't do anything more with him today. I guess we are both feeling icky today!

Since I had some extra time, I decided to decorate the jump poles. The barn owner mentioned a while back that I should get some duct tape and tape the jump poles. I've had the duct tape in my vehicle for a while, but I've never found the time to do it. After decorating two poles, I stopped to take advantage of the light and take some awesome pictures.

Picking out his feet.

Apparently Gambley "parks" when you scratch his itchy spot.

I love the layers of color in this picture. This is the road that runs beside the arena.

I got him in the middle of a head-shake.

He's pretending to ignore me, but do you see those perky ears?

Behold: The Horse-Eating Trees!

Another head shake.

The jump poles.

It looks really nice for being duct tape.