Sore Muscle Weekend

Friday I had planned to go out and buy my friends wedding gift and get some other wedding related things that I would need. My plans were disturbed when Kjersti suddenly realized that due to an evening commitment, she wouldn't have enough time to clean stalls and get her riding lesson in. So I decided to go help her clean stalls. Uff da. There's really a trick to getting the horsey stuff to stay on the mucking rake, but make the hay and shavings fall through. We labored until 2:30 when it was time to get the horses for the lessons (I had decided to have a lesson too since I was already out there.) So she saddled up Twister in dressage gear, and she helped me saddle up Doogie in just regular English. I decided to give English a try since I've only ever ridden Western before. I was in for a ride!

Kjersti was out in the arena doing pivot turns and such...I can't remember all the names of the things she was making that horse do. Meanwhile, I was out in the arena trying to make Doogie do what I was telling him to do. He's a very stubborn horse. He kept getting really close to the rail in order to squish my leg. Anyway, I was learning how to ride English, which means I had to learn to post when Doogie trotted. Then when Lisa, the instructor, told me to canter him I had to try and make him do it -- but like I said, he's stubborn and I also found out he's lazy. In order to not have to canter when I told him to he'd ignore my commands and go straight for a barrel. He's a smart horse. He knew that if he ran toward a barrel he'd either have to stop or stumble over it and he knew that I surely didn't want to get thrown, so he'd choose to stop. I was getting quite irritated with him. And to boot he's a rather ugly spotted horse.

All in all I had a fun time fighting with Doogie because in the end I'd been stringent enough with him and he was doing what I was telling him to. He almost threw me three times, but I stayed on and that probably irritated him.

By the end of the lesson my legs were tired from posting and quite wobbly when I got down from the saddle. Kjersti then got a call that her commitment for the night had been canceled. Oh well.

When I arrived home I called up Dad to see what the plans were for the next day. We decided to head a few hours northwest and do some bird hunting.

We got up at 4:30am on Saturday, left the house by 5:15 and arrived in Pembine around 8. The sun was just coming over the trees and felt warm, but once we got into the woods it was cold and they had had the first frost for the winter that night. We waded through the now overgrown logging trail and got wet pants from the melting frost and the dew. Brrr.

We jumped only one grouse from about 8am all the way until noon...and we both missed it. Anyway, we walked several miles through brush and trees, over rock and dried creek beds. We stopped at the spot where I went deer hunting for the first and last time six years ago.

We then drove to another place where we jumped another grouse and I shot it. That was pretty fun. Then we jumped four more, but we either didn't get a shot or we missed them. Bummer.

We left for home around 4:30.
So all in all we had a fun day, but only one grouse to prove it. I'm paying for this all today being saddle sore and walking-all-day-sore.

On another note, jobs seem to be lining up for me -- I may even have options!
Thanks all for praying about that aspect.

Ciao!