Well the weather man predicted this would be an unusually cold and wet winter for North Carolina and so far Mother Nature is proving him right!

Unfortunately winter months eliminate my ability to play with the horses after work because of daylight savings time. This leaves me with the weekend days to get my horsey time in. I have been given brief doses that have been enough to keep me going, but I am longing for a decent chunk of time spent with Tucker.

I was supposed to go on a trail ride last weekend, unfortunately that got rained out. The sun did come out for a bit in the afternoon and I rushed outside to saddle Tucker up and take a few spins around the ring. I had some ride time last Sunday as well and then Tucker was treated to giving a pony ride to one of my friends' son.

I was hoping for the trail ride again this weekend however, it brought more rain :( It cleared up briefly this afternoon, however there has been so much rain that everything is a muddy mess. It's a good opportunity to play with mud puddles but not safe to do much else. I learned something interesting about Tucker though. Lance headed out before me and brought Freckles into the ring. When I got out there my horse was cantering (to my dread as I he slipped all over the place) along the muddy fence line in a kicking bucking fit. What was this?!?!?!?!?!? A bit of herd bound behavior, upset at being the one left behind, complaint about not being let in the barn when you thought it was feeding time. I'm not sure what the fit was about, but it was highly unusual behavior to say the least. He never has a problem leaving Freckles behind, but apparently he does not want her to go. Since his energy was already through the roof I decided to play quiet games on the ground out of sight of where Lance and Freckles were playing. At first he still acted distracted and kept trying to crane his neck around to see if he could get a look at them but after a few minutes he seemed to tune into me instead. He had a high energy about him the entire time we played so I tried to contrast that and keep him from exploding by being as calm as possible and making him play games he had to think through. We used the mud "river" that now runs through the pasture as a good obstacle to play with. Squeeze, yo-yo, driving till he would put all his feet through in a calm non avoiding way. I don't really think he is right brained about the mud, I think he just does not like it.

I'm so thankful to live with the horses. If we still boarded both this weekend and last we never would have had the few minutes to run out there and play with the horses we would have missed seeing them entirely. The investment of time would not have been worth the risk to get to the barn just to get rained out.

I have not played with my horses in two weeks. Holiday travel, weather and work hours are interfering with my sessions. I had a very brief session of friendly game with Freckles last weekend, but it did not really amount to much.

I'm supposed to trailer the horses to the park for a trail ride with a girlfriend tomorrow morning, unfortunately the forecast is not looking good :(

I need some horsey time to balance back out. Here's to holding out hope that things will get clearer this weekend.