Tuesday was good and bad. Bad was riding Nelson who is now stabled in Murphy’s old stall, and it was hard going in there. Bad was also finding out that Martino, who came to the stables from the same previous owner as Murphy, had died from colic during the weekend. We’ve now lost four horses this year, and Fleur just before the end of last year, and we have several currently injured. After a very good 2009 in terms of overall horse health, 2010 is looking bleak.
Good was the mishap down in the arena which ended up firmly distracting me. Last week someone had put on Heddvig’s stirrups the wrong way, so that the safety rubber band was on the inside instead of the outside. I ended up fixing that a little clumsily by opening the stirrup leathers and switching out the stirrups instead of just switching the whole stirrup from one side to the other. This week, Nelson’s were wrong too, and I decided to do it properly and pulled off the whole stirrup on each side to switch them.
And then neither me nor the instructor could get them back on. Oops. So, I had to ride without stirrups. For dressage on Nelson, not so bad in general. Except we were doing preparatory work for jumping and some actual jumping. But I did it, and I stayed on. And after jumping I got some really nice trot out of Nelson too, that seemed to get to his back and hind legs very effectively. I felt quite accomplished, and it was a very good distraction.