Rode Luca again. He was an absolute jerk to lunge- taking off, bucking, tried pulling the lunge out of my hands once. We did a bunch of transitions up and down and suddenly he remembered his job. He was a fun ride. We set up three poles at E and B, first at trotting length, then lengthened one set to canter strides. I'm not convinced we got the striding right, at all, but he was definitely balancing himself better. We did some 10m canter circles (because he wouldn't bend otherwise) and oh, oh, we stayed cantering through them, and I didn't need to balance like a barrel racer to stay straight on the horse! It was lovely.

Robert has been redoing all the doors to runs in the hay barn so they're on the inside of the barn, rather than the outside. We reached another crucial step in the "girls and powertools" stage when he told me to use the drill to disassemble an outer door he'd taken down. And went over and showed me the bit I would need to use, where the charged battery was, and how to take the battery out of the drill (which I failed at- need less fingernail, more finger strength), which were all critical parts of the process, it turns out, and things I didn't know. He also showed me how to change the bit, which, whatevs, that's fine. And then he left to go teach a lesson! I ran in briefly to have him open the drill to take the battery out, but that was that- I took the door apart and stacked the wood and we didn't have another conversation about it. It was fantastic.

Less fantastic was not doing anything the rest of the day. Chuck is trying to sell Niki, and wanted to know how she was doing/when I'd be around so he could take pictures of me riding her. And I mean, I don't want to buy her, but I really do like riding her, and she's the first horse I've really had control over her training-- I didn't start her from the ground up, but I've done *everything* with her after longlining in the riding process. And I think I figured I'd have more time with her. I could have had a lot more done with her if I hadn't been so lazy, so it's not like it wasn't my fault, but it's still a little upsetting. Robert and Chuck keep telling me that once Niki is sold, Jewel (his new horse) will get brought down here and I can ride her all I want. Jewel is apparently a real nice quarter horse, trained for cutting but not good enough to be in the money, and I guess can do a decent reining pattern. Which makes me immediately think of mugwump, of course. It'll be fun, but I like taking a green horse and showing them something, and having them realize what you want and be happy to do it. Niki and Will were both a lot of fun that way.

I guess one of these days I'll buy a horse, and then regret not being able to hand it back to an owner when I don't want to deal with it anymore. Bleh. At least Keno is somewhat desperate for attention, whickering wildly whenever I walk by. It's a little pathetic.