2022 Riding Journey

#3 Disgruntled

This lesson definitely wasn't one of my best, but maybe one where I learned the most.  Hopefully, anyway.  

It was cold and brisk when I first arrived.  Sea Monster, the blanketed horse, was in the arena again, and just as eager as before, following me along the fence.  Tequila and Daisy came to greet us.  

Sea Monster has looks that I like.  Not only is he a flashy bay, with socks, but he's leggy.  However, his legs aren't thin, but bony, and his head is pleasantly shaped. 

My first job was to stuff feed sacks, and then to grab an orange bucket and put some metal that had been picked up with a rolling magnet by Carol.  See, where we are, the wind always unearths more metal / trash, so Carol came out on the weekend and helped pick it up.

So I picked up the feed sacks, there wasn't that many.  And then found the orange bucket.  The metal was on two feed sacks, along with a bunch of dirt.  I did the best I could to get all the metal out without the dirt.  

Just as I was about finished, my trainer came by and said that when I was done, I could grab the hay fork and wheel barrow to scoop up the rest of the hay in the tack shed.  Only, I wasn't to give it to any specific horse but to just leave it in the shed.

So, I finished putting the metal in the bucket, put the two feed sacks in the trash, and went on to the next job.  

I had to do some searching for the wheelbarrow, because it wasn't where I'd last left it and I couldn't remember if I'd seen it any other place.  But in the end I located it (it was the one-wheel one).  

Scraping up hay is a good job for the most part, although you do get it on your jacket and sometimes in your boots.  I tried my best to make sure the hay didn't have anything in it, like wood pieces, and other things. 

As I neared the end of this job, my trainer came and gave me a bath towel.  She said she wanted me to dust off the tack.  All she wanted me to do was remove the layer of dust that settles on everything where we live.  This seemed easy to me at the time.  

So, I finished up the job with the hay, and then went to dusting.  It was satisfying to remove the dust and see the shininess of the saddles come through.  Some of the saddles had been dusting for awhile.  

I also dusted off the bridles along the back wall, but some of them had more than just a layer of dust.  The dust had combined with moisture to form a dirty coating that couldn't come off without soap and water.  I did the best I could.  

About the time I was finishing these bridles, my trainer came to fetch something from the tack shed.  She said the weather showed that the wind was going to die down later, and then I could have my lesson.  I told her I'd dusted off all the tack.  And then she told me to start dusting off the tack on the pallets.

Now, some clarification.  My trainer has a LOT of tack.  More than she can use by herself, and even more than what she needs for lessons.  So, some of the not-as-good tack that she doesn't use has been put over on these pallets.  

I didn't think she'd want me to dust those, because they're not used and all, but sure enough, she wanted me too.  I'll be honest, it looked terrifying.  There wasn't just a layer of dust on these saddles, okay, there was SEVERAL layers. 

I put two little kid western saddles over on another saddle, and so then I had a space to put these saddles on to clean them.   

Thankfully, about this time my Friend arrived.  I had known she might be coming, but I didn't know for sure.  With her being there, it relieved the tedium.  

We talked about horse things and cleaned off insane amounts of dust.  It was so bad on many saddles that you couldn't tell what color the leather was, and you had to 'unearth' it to find out.