A Working Vacation Day

Friday was the final day of my vacation.  Saturday and Sunday don't really count.  So what did I do?  I gave myself permission to spend the entire day at the barn.

It started with another field trip for Sydney.  He got to go back to Cha Ching's place for an easy peasy lemmon squeezy morning ride.  He was a very good boy.  Well mostly ... he didn't load up at the barn like I like, but some gentle hazing by a passing neighbor got him in.  Click photos for larger view.

Just finishing up ...

One last picture before untacking ...

While Sydney and I were gone, I left Speedy G out in the arena with a flake of hay to enjoy the ridiculously warm California sunshine.  The truth is, when I asked him to come to the gate so I could put him back in his stall while I was gone, he looked at me, thought about it, and said, nah, I'd rather stay out here.  Fine by me. He always wants to come back in so that sun must have felt really good.  When Sydney and I came back an hour later, Speedy was dozing in the sun.  As soon as he spotted the truck and trailer, he very cutely galloped along the fence line toward us.  Ahh ...

I pulled Speedy out of the arena and turned Sydney loose.  Sydney tends to get anxious in there after about ten minutes.  I wanted to see how long he could stay out there while being relaxed.  I gave him a pan of alfalfa cubes to go with the left-over hay and continued with my barn chores.  I checked on him every few minutes, and was delighted that he spent more than an hour just snacking, wandering around, and sunning himself. Hmm ... maybe the Fluphenazine is doing its thing?  

With Speedy in his stall and Sydney out relaxing, I decided to clean the tack room.  I love cleaning the tack room.  It always gives me such a feeling of satisfaction when I am done.  I had bought three new plastic storage tubs and wanted to get all my goodies into them.  The dust at our barn seeps into everything!  Here's my half of the tack room after a good sweeping ...  Click photos for larger view.

I moved everything and swept, swept, swept!

The plastic tubs keep things cleaner.

After cleaning everything, including some tack, I saddled up Speedy and took him for a ride around the neighborhood.  We did some pleasant lolly-gagging, a hand gallop, and some naughty, unasked for passage -wish I could get that from him on command!

When I looked at my watch as I was leaving, I was ecstatic to see that I had spent six hours at the barn.  Now that's a vacation!