EEEEK! Its Been a Week!

..and I haven´t posted a thing!

..but I have been keeping myself out of trouble.

Poor horse and I have lacked a level and safe riding space ever since we began on the re-training journey together. We can often be found riding on the roads doing our dressage training...which is great for the straight stuff, but our circle work suffers somewhat. Fuelled by the frustration of not having anywhere to work, I got the HH on the smart end of the tape measure and pegged out an arena on the flattest part of our block, which also happens to be the best draining ground as well.

That was all well and good until you realise that the grass is almost waist high. So I had to crank up the tractor to take said grass down a peg or two. Then the lawnmower was run over the area to take it down to little toe height. It is not pretty, but it does work. Poor horsey has almost had enough of circle work. I can´t say I don´t blame him. It is far more interesting trail-riding while dressage training!

I realise that an arena is totally self indulgent and no doubt out of place within a blog that does state ¨Trying to reduce my carbon footprint¨ however, I feel that life is a balancing act between doing the right thing by the planet without withdrawing from society altogether. My horses provide me that sense of balance. I love working with them, being with them and sometimes just watching them.

Besides they are all cast offs from other people. So in effect my horses are recycled, reused and being repurposed along the way. My riding horse, as I have written about previously, was a harness racing horse that was simply too slow to win races. Most of these standardbred horses are sent to the sales where they are sold for meat that feeds your dogs. Some of the lucky ones escape a life of essentially being bred for meat and they end up as pleasure horses. Thats what my boy is, a pleasure riding horse...who just happens to belong to someone who enjoys the equestrian pursuit of dressage. And that someone spent an entire day mowing out an arena so she could work said horse.

Check out the square halt on the dog! If only my horse could replicate that more consistently!

My carbon footprint swelled a little in size this week, but I can live with it.