Preparing for a Guest

This weekend finds me slogging around on Hudson in the cold, misty rain.

A wholesale change of weather, from unseasonably warm and sunny to very seasonably cold and rainy would normally be enough to keep me out of the saddle until the front passes through.

But I have a VIV, a Very Important Visitor, coming in a couple days.  She’s my Japanese niece, and she has been taking English riding lessons every week since she was young, after meeting my horses way back when, and she wants nothing more than to go on a real trail ride.  So I have been riding Hudson and Starlight, to get the black-and-white dynamic duo ready for this important ride.

Hooooooo-hooooooo!  I hear the train a'comin.

Unfortunately, during last week’s fine weather, I was working every evening at my money-making job (as opposed to my personal horse job, which is my money-sucking job), so the two ponies had a week off to get all fresh and silly again.  

Yesterday’s ride on Hudson was the typical freight-train-on-amphetamines trip that her first outing after a while off always is, so I’m about to go back out to what I’m expecting will be a much more mellow mount – still Hudson, just a different Hudson. 

Then Starlight will get to travel the trail-ride route that my niece and I will take this week.  I’ll do this pattern with the both of them for the next couple days, so every mare has her head in the game by the time said niece arrives. 

Wish I'd bought that riding rain suit when it was on sale...