Lacey...again....

Yesterday was supposed to Lacey's "spa" day but it was raining so much that I decided to wait until today to do stuff to her. It was a mistake. Hahaha!

Today I thought I'd wash her tail and her legs, then take her on a ride in the not rainy weather. Well, it was not rainy until I got her legs all washed off and all the conditioner out of her tail, then it started POURING.

On the plus side, it was about 50*F out so being super super wet wasn't too bad. I ended up so wet that when I leaned over Lacey to dismount, a stream of water came out of my coat and went running down the saddle. It was ridiculous. On the double plus side, my saddle is synthetic so no amount of water is going to really hurt it.

In other news, I'm restarting Lacey's clicker training. She's a huge fan of the whole clicker thing, but before when I was using it on her I wasn't able to do it as often as she needed to really learn anything. Now though, since she's basically at home, I see her everyday so I'm able to, hopefully, really teach her some stuff. Right now I'm clicking her for moving her feet. I'm not sure what trick/behavior I'm going to use that for but there's probably something. Maybe "dancing"? I don't know yet.
She does get a little nibble-y with all these carrot pieces she's getting but so far she's only nibble-y during training and as soon as I tell her training is done (by rubbing her face enthusiastically, telling her she's a good girl, and generally being animated), she stops, even if I still have treats. And I never reward the nibble-y behavior so no worries there.
I'm already pleased with her progress though. She started out yesterday (when I started this officially) with just a few foot movements forward and today she progressed to moving forward multiple steps AND backwards multiple steps. So go her!

Anyway, pictures:

Going down to my house to get her feet/tail washed (we were going on a ride after so she was carrying her stuff):



Tail!



Cleaner!
Look at those cute lil' socks she has! They're my absolute favorite. I love that front one, how the sock has black in it too... Interesting!



Heading down the the trail:
"You know I hate rain in my face, maybe if I try to tuck my head it'll go away..."
Also, note how she's holding the bit herself. I laughed really hard when I saw that, even her mouth looks miffed!
Double also, look who's wearing a snaffle and not a pelham! Somehow sommmmmeoooonnnnneeee decided that they miraculously can feel jointed snaffles and that they don't need to freak out about them anymore!



"Thank goodness, we're not walking into the rain anymore!"



"Too much wet!!"



All the snow we had melt last week and all the rain we've been getting has turned an underground stream into and above ground stream. At it's deepest point it's about a foot deep. It's terrifying to me becuase it's just the right width to grab Lacey's hoof and twist her leg. Yikes!



And because Lacey hates being left out of pictures:



So deep and scary!!



Later on...
My camera got so wet that the lens was doing some weird watery stuff and I was so wet that I was highly ineffective at wiping it off. Haha!





Lacey's tail when we got back! All clean and...dry??



Her crupper decided to give her a red dorsal stripe... Apparently it didn't like getting wet too much... haha!





Also, Lacey and I jumped a log in the forest 4 times! It was absolutely terrifying (but fun).
I'd get Lacey trotting, she'd trot right up to it, then stop for a second, act like "OH SHOOT! I didn't see that log there!!", and LAUNCH herself over that thing, giving it probably 2 feet more than it's 14 inch height warranted. Towards the end I got her so that she was just jumping it huge, no weird stopping, but it was still scary. She's so much fun, so the best horse to be trying out stiff with. I felt kinda bad though because I probably, accidentally, didn't release enough maybe 3 out of the 4 jumps. They were completely draped before the jump but somehow by mid-jump they were tight on her mouth.

Great pictures. I still get a kick out of her heart.

Great pics! She's sooo adorable! Her facial expressions really make the pic, and really tell how she is feeling, and what she is thinking! Her tail looks marvelous!!!

Look forward to more Lacey pics!!!

So cute! You look like you could be one of my friend's twin! Lol

Great pics, Lacey is beautiful as always!!

Very beautiful Lacy

Great shots! Those fluke ones with the rain on your camera are pretty cool!

Thank you all! :) Lacey is glad that someone could take pleasure in her displeasure, I think it makes her feel better about all that rain.

Apparently my camera decided that that rain was the rain that broke the camel's back, as it were, and now it's refusing to work. :( It didn't even get all that wet, I'm not sure what it's problem is. So I'm mad at it now. Haha!
Hopefully it'll dry out...

And WSA, those pictures are my favorite too! I got them off my camera and was like "Woah! Unexpected!" lol!

That's really funny! I must have one of "those" faces because I often get told "You look exactly like ____!!" Too funny.

She's so fun!!! And beautiful, nice job on the tail! And yay on the jumping!!! What was that like in the Aussie?!

I love pictures of you girls!

What is that scary break in the road though? :(

It wasn't bad actually! That Aussie is basically like having a seatbelt on your horse, only in a safe way, so I felt pretty safe. I've done some jumping (when I was 14/15/16) and I think I prefer it in the Aussie. However, my form was completely terrible so I guess I know why there aren't Aussie jumping compositions...

That scary break in the road: Basically, around here, there are streams under pretty much everything (and apparently there's one that goes underneath the trail I ride on). In the last week and a half-ish we've gotten at least 8 inches of snow that melted in under 24 hours and then 5-6 inches of rain so that underground stream decided to become an above ground and underground stream... Then, all that water ended up just eroding through the 6 inches of gravel separating the underground stream from the above ground one.
It's terrifying. Inmates were down there clearing stuff on Wednesday so hopefully they fixed that too or at least told the city... My fingers are crossed.




Also, in other news! I got Miss Lacey another saddle! This one is one of those Big Horn cordura's that's pretty much exactly the one I used to ride her in but then had to give up becuase I didn't own it. I got this on the cheap so it's a little smashed...that's ok though because I don't really need anything too fancy. As long as it fits her and me (which it seems to), I'm good.
One of the fenders had a spot on it where a cat had apparently scratched the living daylights out of it so I decided to cover it with other cloth. It actually didn't come out half bad! I'm tempted to sew a little stripe on to the back of the saddle, behind the cantle, to kind of tie it together, but we'll see.

Anyway, here you go:

Before:



After: