Birthday Blast

Once again, despite having a day to myself I didn't manage up to the yard until late afternoon. I achieved a few previously put-off tasks at home so no bad thing!

I couldn't decide between a long-rein hack and a ridden one. Feeling rather lazy, I plumped for for the latter ;)

Whilst it wasn't a roasting day it was warm in the sun, so Quadi was a touch sleepy and had to be dragged in from the field. He's not putting on any weight on the sparse summer grazing which is good, but I'm having to juggle this with getting enough fibre into him so that he doesn't get a bloated tummy. He was keen on his hay when he came in, munching away whilst I groomed his muddy butt.

I'm not sure if it was just his humour or the heat or tiredness from shivering yesterday but he was a little backwards today. Just not striding out as I'd thought he would. He was bright and alert in the stable and on our hack, and I took his temperature prior to work (37.3C for reference), nothing indicated he was feeling poorly.

We had a lovely hack save him being a little nosey and tripping up, or almost bashing his nose/my knee off of trees as he wasn't paying attention to where we were heading. Typical boy sometimes...

We did the reverse to our usual circuit around The Loop, so we had a little leg stretch down the hill and round the bend to the right. He was lovely and bouncy, I asked him to lengthen his stride once around the bend and he did so without going hell for leather. Very Good Boy. I hadn't really felt him use his back until after this so I think it was good for both of us! Not that I can really expect him to be using his back, we've regressed somewhat in our training but it'll come back as I get my head screwed on and we get some schooling under our belts. Both of us have reverted back to old habits, oops!

Rather a boring birthday by most people's standards but I was just happy to spend some time in the company of my favourite bloke!