Only managed to get around to riding today by 1 pm. No shock there I
guess, but I really should try to find a way to get to the barn
earlier in the day.

Anyway, I finished warming up star right at the stroke of 1, which is
perfect for my new mission. (Nobody roll their eyes now.) I need to
stop riding for such short periods of time, so I'm trying to keep
track of how long I've actually been riding, rather than how long it
feels like. So I'm implementing kindof a parelli thing (again people,
no eye rolling) where we start our post warm-up with incrementally
more amd more continuous trotting. We're working up to 30 minutes in
five minute intervals. Turns out my attention span is about ten
minutes, so today we did fifteen. In theory you go straight from your
trot to whatever your real work is that day. Transitions, cantering,
circles, patterns, lead changes, whatever. I'm not totally clear on
the specifics.

So for us today we did our fifteen minutes one way, then we just did
fifteen minutes the other way and then quit. I vow to go longer in the
future, but I'm pleading sleep deprivation on this one. There was,
however, a little twist on all this trotting. We did all of it in the
field on the west side of the indoor arena. Turns out, that field has
a non-negligible slope to it. Definitely enough to be beneficial to
muscle development. It took quite a while to convince star that we
werent planning on doing the jumps in the field there. She did
eventually calm down and switch over to the project of trying to
convince me that a nice lazy pony ride was the way to go.

Still, I think I managed to get some good work out of her. Especially
when we were headed up the slope.

I hand walked Papillon around the field. Sleepwalked is more like it.
She loosened up by the end but I didnt ride her.

I took Libby out to lunge and she tried once to change directions and
she pulled more than I like and rushed more than I like but mostly she
was fine. After a short lunge we worked on mounting block standing. We
walked around the block and sniffed the block, and then came the
exciting part. I started scratching her whither and then stepped up to
the first step, then the second. She was too engrossed in expressing
her enjoyment of the scratching to notice. I stepped off and stopped
the scratching. I stepped back up and she shied away, but I reached
out to scratch her anyway. Stepped down, moved mounting block, she stood there suspicious but anticipating her scratchies.

I went to put the mounting block away and I stood on it one last time so she could look at me, but she walked over and presented her whithers for scratching. Score. I knew I was going to like training an itchy horse.