Hello, beautiful

My follow up appointment got me all green lights but orders to take it easy.  I smiled and said 'oh, so I can go to my show on Friday?'.  The doctor looked me up and down slowly and asked 'are you a trainer?'.  So it appears she's dealt with horse people before.  Hee hee.  I assured her I'm an amateur and that it was just a schooling show where I'm giving a friend a ride.  The official answer is that I am not in any danger of hurting myself by getting back to work, but I needed to take it easy.  The antibiotics were doing their job and I was feeling much better, but I'm still sick.  I still get tired much easier than I'm used to and I need to give my body a fighting chance to finish off this infection.  I agreed to take it easy and my doctor rolled her eyes.  I don't think she believed me.

On Wednesday I stopped off to groom my pony.  I was being good!  I just wanted to go to the barn and see the beast.  I figured I would reset his pasture braids and get his tail brushed out.  Trainer A mentioned that he'd been a bit of a loon for his ride that day so I was NOT to ride him until she'd had at least one more ride on him.  Fine, fine.


I got to spend an hour grooming and fussing over him.  A lot of that was getting his tail untangled.  What a mess.

But he looks so innocent!

Tonight I got to tack up and head to the arena.  My lower back is starting to forgive me for the lumbar puncture but I didn't want to push my luck.  I just wanted a nice twenty to thirty minute ride to test drive my body and see how it was doing.  Trainer A was having a hell of a day with kids popping off left and right.  When she saw Theo, she pointed at him and said 'and then there was that'. 

Apparently they had a tough ride today.  He was giving her the hoof instead of going forward and, well, things escalated.  That explained why Theo was not at all interested in coming out to play today.  I spent the first ten minutes doing walk work with lots of pats and cookies to change his ear set and get him back on board.  I was relieved to find my lower back soreness had zero effect on my ability to sit.  With lots of encouragement and cookies, Theo shook off his bad mood and started to engage for me.  It'll take a couple more rides for him to settle back in to our groove. 

Don't worry, papi, mom is home and we're going back to work.