Snow, snow and more snow

We're currently on the verge of our third snowstorm in two weeks. I don't even know how much we're getting - just that I can't see out the window or leave my house.



Shoveling a pathway from our garage



Yesterday my friend A and I took the jumps that we made to her barn, and I got to meet her horse Cash. Cash is a 14.2 hand quarter horse mare bred and trained to do barrel racing and cow penning. She's a pretty sweet girl and she's definitely got more speed than Walker. It was kind of fun to fly around on a horse like that. She's super responsive and it's obvious that she'd be good for cow penning. You so much as flick your reins to one direction or the other and she turns on a dime. Same thing with leg cues. You really don't need to kick or even squeeze. The only thing A has to do is find the happy medium between keeping her quick and responsive to the leg but actually being able to put her leg on her without her taking off. Pretty much any contact means speed up so it took some getting used to. We also set the jumps up for her and she's pretty willing to jump them. She seemed pretty excited to do it so A is going to start doing some pole work in the summer and get her in shape.

I also got to ride another horse at her barn bareback. I don't normally make a habit of jumping on random horses bare back but this girl was 30 years old so I felt fairly safe! She's an old dressage mare that her current owner then turned into a barrel racer, if you can imagine it. For an older horse, she definitely has a lot of get up and go. It was clear that she didn't want to just walk, and she had a lovely comfortable trot on her. She had some leg problems earlier in the year so the vet suggested that she needed a little light riding now and again to get the juices flowing or whatever the case may be. We just hacked around on her walk/trot for maybe 20 minutes but she definitely seemed like she would go forever. However she was horribly stiff on one side so hopefully her owner has the chance to work that out of her.

It was a pretty fun day and I'm glad that I finally got to meet A's horse. Unfortunately the lighting in her barn and arena wasn't great so I wasn't able to get any good pictures or video. Tomorrow I'm going back to my apartment for the rest of the holidays to get Walker ready for the clinic. With my luck, we'll get another crazy storm and the clinic will get cancelled. :s

I hope everyone has a great New Year's Eve!