We had a nice spring, until the day before the Solstice, then wham, 90° F or above every day.  No more springtime weather for us down here in the South. 

On Wednesday I told Debbie I would not be able to do much more than a walk.  As usual Mick was stiff right behind the saddle so I did my usual warm-up of gradual turns and the three speeds of the walk.  After 15 minutes Debbie looked at my face and decided what I needed was to go on a trail…

Bobby is a Pony

After not being to get down off of Merlin without help I woke up last Sunday REALLY reluctant to ride him.  I couldn’t get Shannon on the phone to tell her I had to switch to someone shorter for the summer, so I took two bridles and three girths out to the farm.  Luckily I got there before Shannon had caught Merlin and she cheerfully agreed to let me ride Bobby, her British Riding Pony, who had been donated to her program because he had had…

I had some excitement riding this week.

Wednesday stuff was a bit disorganized at the barn, Debbie had gotten stuck in traffic and would be a few minutes late.  One of her teenage students kindly got, groomed and tacked up Mick for me, and this wonderful girl came out to the ring with me, helped me mount and hung around watching me until Debbie got there.  Mick was pretty stiff, so I just walked around for the first 15 minutes, some circles, some one or two loop…

Off of Merlin, that is.  Obviously I eventually got down, but this is a problem from my Multiple sclerosis that I’ve not run into since I was diagnosed.

From long before I was diagnosed, I had started sort of vaulting out of the saddle when I wanted to get off.  I had no problems with this method until, several months ago when I got hung up by the cantle trying to vault off Mick the first time I rode him.  So I started practicing getting off the normal way since I had…