I could start this blog by saying absolutely nothing has been happening, and while that’s true, as the title of this post implies, it’s also…not.

As I’m sure everyone everywhere has heard, there was a county jail break not quite 3 weeks ago and a convicted murderer escaped. That was close, but not that close to me. About 15 miles? But my county. Near Longwood Gardens. I pass by the jail and Longwood regularly. No big deal. Until he stole a van and camped out 5 minuted from my mother’s house and she was in the shelter-in-place zone. In fact, news media was live-streaming from the bottom of her hill. So, that was unsettling. And watching the coverage, I knew every road and hill and fun place they kept showing. But he was caught and life returned to normal. Sort of.

Wednesday night there was a horrific fire in my town. It took out almost an entire block of our Main Street. 90 people were displaced from their apartments above the small businesses. After burning for almost 20 hours (water was in short supply as fire ponds ran out and water was trucked in hourly), buildings were demolished to stop the spread. It’s completely heartbreaking. They think the fire started in the Dubarry warehouse and just spread. It’s all just gone. These aren’t my photos. All courtesy of the folks on the Oxford Facebook group.

Then last night 9 juveniles overtook 2 female guards at a detention facility in Morgantown, PA (15 miles the OTHER direction from my mom) and were running loose. They were all back in custody by 7am, but still. Come on PA… let’s fix all of this (the facility happens to have stuff like this happen often). 4 gave up because they were cold and tired kids. But still. 5 stole a truck and got in mini chase.

Then there is Nay. He’s still on vacation because, it turns out, steroids make him nuts. So, for everyone’s safety, he’s off until he’s off his steroids… We’re trying that now, but he got hives immediately.

Anyway, as you can tell, things have been pretty uneventful, boring, and not at all resembling any Dick Wolf TV show.

Life (work) has been in the way and with Nay Nay’s skin and bug inflicted conditions, the last couple of months were nice to just give up and take off. But, with my stuff due on Thursday, I took a break Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to pretend to ride.

Friday I thought about hauling out and it just didn’t work out. So I attempted to lunge in the round pen. I say attempt because it was a bit of a mess. Nay tried Subi’s old “rear and spin” trick, but I waved it off. You see, with the exception of Batt and Subi after my my friend Kim came and put the fear of god in him, the round pen hasn’t been much of a success. Batt actually liked it. Actually, Jiminy did well in it too. And once Subi realized he worked or he faced death by short blonde woman, he did ok too. But Nay? He’s fabulous on the line but hates that round pen. But, we tried and managed some OK work. With lots of rearing. We worked through it though. Then I got on and we walked around and tried to trot. There’s a little incline (my entire property is on a hill) so we tried to only trot up the incline as he felt like he was going to fall going down hill because, Nay things.

I went out after a morning of work on Saturday with the intention a lunge then ride. Boy was I wrong. I had 2 kids on ponies, but their mothers told them to stay on one end so I could use the other half to lunge. Great.

That was the only great part of it.

It started off ok. The ring literally had 2 jumps in it in the center so it felt massive. And terrifying. We trotted for a minute. Tried to bolt. Got back on track. Then galloped. Then trotted. Then reared. Then trotted. Then reared. Then… tried to roll…WITH MY SADDLE.

Thankfully he went down and felt the flap of the saddle and stopped because he’s NOT STUPID just a jerk. So I stopped. One of the mom’s helped me untack because, at this point he was REALLY being stupid and I took him in the indoor and just let him gallop. For 10 minutes he galloped and rolled and galloped and bucked and galloped and rolled (10 freaking times). And then he decided he was exhausted. So I decided we were lunging to prove a point. So we trotted and “cantered” a circle. He was fine. Other than tired beyond belief.

We went back out to the outdoor, the same mom tacked him up while I held him since he was being obnoxious while she held him. And I got on. The kids left, but we walked. I was going to trot in his attempt at rolling, my stirrup came loose and I didn’t realize it. I wasn’t in the mood to go stirrup-less…

Fast-forward to Sunday. I figured I’d free-lunge again but there were people in the indoor so we lunged, tackless. He’s lost the privilege of lunging with tack for now. But he was fine. We took advantage of no jumps and just lunged up and down the outdoor, using the whole ring (walk and trot). Then took a water break, tacked up and bug-sheeted, and went to work.

We’ve been off so long I realized just how many holes we have. So, I decided that we’re going back, way back, to the basics. Right now we’re walking. And we’re working hard at the walk. Energy? That can come out free lunging or lunging. Riding we walk and work. We are going to have the best damn walk before we trot. Then we’re going to have the best damn trot before we work on the canter.

You see, he’s decent to the left at the walk and trot (decent, not good). He’s not good at the walk to the right, but has a fabulous canter to the right (but falls in). His left lead canter doesn’t exist. So we’re missing something. So we can fix those holes by actually not rushing to the next place. I want a lesson where I spend 30 minutes at the walk. My trainer won’t do that? I’ll find someone who will. I’ve also been introducing the clicker and he’s picking it up on the ground. So I played with it undersaddle yesterday and it didn’t seem to break the connection like a pat or “good boy” or “yes” does. So, I’m going with it.