A little wistful ...

A friend is expecting in January.    She just described all the gymnastics baby to be is doing ....

Usually I am thankful I only have to worry about the future for the country/world in general but every once in a while someone's pregnancy makes me wistful that I have never and will never experience all that.

Oh well,  I had a fun ride yesterday with my dad.

I wimped out on going to an endurance ride saturday because it was forecasted to be and wascold and raw and aside from my wimpiness I did not care to ride an energetic, green Arabian in frisky weather + first time exposure to group of excited horses.

So instead I asked L if she would like to ride there on Sunday like we did last week. Saturday dad asked if I was going riding and I said "yes, want to join us" and he did. L ended up wimping out saturday night, she had gotten chilled on Friday and did not trust it would warm up enough on Sunday so it ended up being just dad and I.

I had planned that I would NOT get my feet wet, made sure to get a good lead rope (not one of my frayed things) on the saddle so that if Sadie needed more encouragement then just following the leader I could have dad pony her across.

However I did not plan on RazzMo refusing to cross for dad. He tried a bit when we headed out and Sadie was getting a bit worked up even as I kept her well back of where Razz was pivoting and being a big baby and I said "lets just go around for now, & make sure and cross on the way back". So we did that.

Sadie was pretty good, we were riding the pasture loop through the prairie dog town and there is a busy highway they were looking at to the North and a kids sports field to the east, neither right next to where we were riding but still more commotion than Sadie has dealt with before. At one point Sadie was in front, doing a power walk and I was thinking "well except for it being so cold yesterday she really was ready for the fun ride and crowd" and I was very relaxed and she saw something she thought was skeery and spun away from it.

Shade or Grey will still spook sometimes at dumb stuff but would have stopped after just a rollback but Sadie spun for a couple revolutions. She may have been upset that the initial move put me off balance (I think she still has some flashbacks from my dumb saddle under her belly this spring) I lost one stirrup and was concerned I'd hit the ground but she did not add any jumps and did stop as I was going Whoa Whoa and finally getting my balance with my stirrup-less leg on her flank and we rode on with no harm no foul rule in effect.

We had to cross the creek on the way back a at a different spot; its been so dry this summer they could just curve right and not get their feet wet but they had to go down a maybe 45 deg. bank first. Razz again would not lead so I got off and led Sadie across first and walked a bit before getting back on.

When we got to the water crossing it was pretty warm and sunny and since it was only 20-30 minutes back to the trailer to ride with wet shoes I got off and led Sadie across when Razz stopped w/o even seeing if dad could persuade him -- which he probably could have if he had needed to. I wanted to have "see its just water, no big deal" with Sadie more than I wanted to keep my feet dry. Sadie did make me very happy by walking right across beside/behind me after just a few seconds of sniffing the water.