COLD is an Understatement

I had planned on riding yesterday and giving Olly the day off today, but I was so cold I couldn't bring myself to take his blanket off. I did open his stall, against all my will, and let him get out of the weather.
So today when I got up I looked out side to see if the wind calmed down, NOPE! High of 31* with winds out of the west at 15-20mph. Super! I waited until like 1400 before going out, hoping it would "warm" up a bit. I realize now how stupid that sounds. I had a great idea to wear over my jeans a pair of my hubby's winter PT's, until I came down and watched my husband look at me like I was crazy. "You wear those and you'll slip right outta the saddle!", he said. Good point. I had planned riding in my dressage saddle, which is even more slippery than any saddle I have ever ridden in. I loaded up in my arms all the items of clothing I would need and headed downstairs to the tack room. By the time I had everything on an ready to go I had on two shirts, two pair of socks, jeans, with half chaps, a hoodie, a scarf, my Carhart, a hat under my helmet and two pairs of gloves. The easiest way I can give you a mental picture is to think back to the movie A Christmas Stroy, where the mom wraps the kid up so much that when he falls he can't get up...that was me today.



While on our ride today it didn't take long to realize that the ground was frozen. We started out walking to get warmed-up. I didn't want to trot or canter on anyting that wasn't grass for fear or hurting his feet. He is barefoot now and doing well. We stared our trot set and happened to come to a creek that was no more than a foot wide. I guess he wasn't paying much attention, because he acted like it snuck up on him. Once he realized what it was he hopped over it and we moved on. 7 minutes later we were back over the "creek" and walking. Since all the crop fieds would be frozen we went to the grassy land where I filmed my flat work. It was big enough to paractice on cantering-galloping-cantering. what a better way to exercise self control :). Once we had done a few sets (which will be posted at the end of the blog)we went to hack out, walking only. By this time I think my nose was frostbitten and Olly was ready to take the first flight back to Hawaii. I couldn't do it anymore, we turned around and headed home. This was the coldest part of the whole ride. I felt terrible making him go out and take his blanket off. What a mean mom. As were walked back to the house I tried to have a uplifting conversation with Olly to try to keep our minds off the cold. It didn't work. I could tell by his attitude he wsn't happy to be out in this nearing Siberia weather. Both he and I resisted the urge to canter home. I could feel it in his step, at any moment if I had given the word we would have been off! As we neared the drive, I waited to hear the neigh of Kiki...nothing! where was that little pony? As we get closer to the barn I see that she is hunkered down in her stall. She has a thermal blanket on and was trying to stay toasty. I didn't blame her a bit. She did come out to greet us once we were at the gate, but soon left us to go back to her stall. I hurried to get olly's blankets back on him so he could be warm and I threw them some hay to hold over til feeding time.
As I was taking my saddle back to the take room, I snapped this pic...



I think she was cold too, I could almost hear her say "let me in, b-itch!"

305 Stats
Walk Lap 1 0.32 mi 7m07s avg speed 2.7mph
Trot Lap 2 1.02 mi 8m02s avg speed 7.6mph
Walk Lap 3 0.3 mi 6m50s avg speed 2.4mph
Canter Lap 4 0.32 mi 5m34s avg speed 15.8mph
Trot Lap 5 0.66 mi 4m58s avg speed 10.0mph
Canter Lap 6 0.74 mi 3m07s avg speed 14.3mph
Walk (hack out away from home) 1.13mi avg speed 3.4mph
Walk (toward home) 0.84 mi avg speed 4.0mph
**Notice speed changes going away from home vs. toward home**

Total
7.46 miles
1h32m
avg speed 4.8mph
Max speed 19.9mph
Calories burned 4433
**Calorie count based on human equations**