Overheating

This morning started with me interrupting poor Hawk at breakfast.

At least I was nice enough to clean his feet for him.

Then there was a trip down Julie's driveway to the dressage arena.

Hawk didn't really want to go where I was telling him, although we're not doing too badly here.

Standing beside Julie in the middle was vastly more enjoyable than walking or trotting around the outside of the arena in his opinion, so Julie put us on a lunge line and we practiced trotting. Posting trot, sitting trot, around, and around, and when we finally stopped, I got to find out just how out of shape I really am right now. My body let me know that it was planning on passing out unless I took a break.

After a few minutes of sitting with my head between my knees, and most of a bottle of water, I was ready for more. Hawk is being very patient with me here.

For the rest of the lesson we worked on geometry. Unfortunately, this isn't the kind I was good at in high school, this was the type where Julie asked me to make a circle, and Hawk and I managed an odd star shape. Hawk apparently doesn't like turning to the right (he was bought as a jumper, not a dressage horse according to Julie). Going the other direction I was able to make a much better approximation of a circle.

Next week (on Saturday as Julie isn't giving lessons on Sunday), I'll probably be riding one of Julie's ponies. She decided that while I am tall, my legs aren't overly long, so it will probably be ok.

I also found out that Hawk's owner is looking for someone to half lease him. Someone to pay half his expenses who would be able to ride him 3 times a week or so. Apparently half his expenses would probably work out to about $200 a month (Julie wasn't sure how much his shoes were). While I'm not ready for something like that at the moment, it was good to get an initial idea of how much something like that would cost me... Now I just need a raise... a really big raise...