It is Friday, so the weekend is officially here and to many folks that means Happy Hour!  I remember in my younger days planning with my girlfriends which bar to head to based on which had the best free happy hour food.  Sound familiar?  Hey, we were poor, and that free food was dinner to go with our reduced cost beverages.  Now, my Happy Hour is spent at the barn with the horses making sure that their buckets are filled with fresh water and that they get their fair share of peppermints and horse treats.  Of course, that doesn’t stop me from having a glass of wine (or two) once I get home.  My how the times have changed.

Ike and I had a short ride, since our lesson was yesterday and the clinic is tomorrow.  He’d had a bad day because the adjacent farm was cutting hay and had spent most of this gorgeous day in his stall.  I wonder about the boy sometimes.  Anyway, I could tell he was on edge while I rode him, but with Mom astride, he tried his best to listen and be brave.  After 20 minutes and solid trot work and multiple successful canter up and down transitions, we called it an afternoon.  There were two feeble attempts at a stretch down trot——-we will leave it at that.

I’m still trying to find the balance of work and time off for Ike.  I typically ride 4 to 5 days a week right now usually for 20-45 minutes depending on the other demands of life.  Is that too much?  Not enough?  Feel free to weigh in if you have a system that you have found works for oversized four-year-olds.  I’m sure that our progress could be greater if I could devote all my time to the pursuit, but unless there is a miracle and we either win the lottery or some long-lost rich relative appears, my barn time will continue to get squeezed in with the rest of the to-do list.  Of course, not everything on that list is a fun as Barn Happy Hour.  Cheers!