After taking two months off since my rotational fall, I got back in the saddle once for a nice, quiet ride across the now empty farm fields that stretch along the ridge behind the barn. I didn't even think of going into the sand ring. We just had a nice, calm walk and no excitement, no trotting, no workout. He skirted around the fallen trees from the wind-storms and we didn't go into the forest because of the fallen trees in the forest. We probably wouldn't have gone in anyway because I…

It is snowing today. It snowed like this exactly one month ago, which saved my life. I'll explain.

On the day after it snowed, I went for our usual training, some trotting over cavaletti, some canter - stop - turn on haunches - canter again; nothing we haven't done a dozen times before.

But suddenly Oakley decided he'd had enough and threw his nose in the air, then reared. He went up, then slipped, and, before I could get out of the saddle, he was above me, and we both landed…

We got invited to the Eglinton Caledon Hunter Pace meet on Labour Day. Not an actual hunt, but a long course across country, very far from the city. I think I've found Oakley's calling.

The course is simple, we follow a marked trail 19km long, which wends its way over hill and dale, across meadows around crops, along paths and through woods. Sometimes we walked, sometimes we trotted, sometimes we cantered, and sometimes we galloped full out. Still kind of fun to pass my friends like…

We began the summer, after the Solstice, with some relaxing of the COVID-19 health restrictions. Finally, open-air competitions were allowed, and, glory be... there was a weekend with a training meet and I wasn't working! The competition was a teaching format, which means day one, I went round the entire course with a coach, over all the jumps, and day 2 went round again, but as a competition.

So we spent the first training day doing well enough, our dressage was sloppy... much…