Rainy Day!?

It's August. I live in Southwest Idaho. It is very hot here in the summer, and not very cold in the winter.

Today, it dumped rain. Not a little Idaho rain, which most people from states with water refer to as "mist" or "non-existent". No, it was a real, hard, respectable rain.

It didn't start that way. It was dripping a little bit when I started tacking Izzy up, but there was light on the horizon, meaning that it would clear up in 20 minutes or so. I monkeyed around with the martingale, making sure everything was fitted right. I got it for $10 on craigslist, so I'm actually thrilled that it fit. It's actually a hunting breastplate with a standing martingale attachment, so there were lots of straps to play with. I made sure the breastplate was properly adjusted, then put the martingale on the loosest setting. Again, all I want it to do is keep her head away from my head. She's not at a point in her training where I even care how she carries her head.

Anyways. She lunged pretty well in it, and we started our lesson. Cathy had me work on getting a true forward walk out of her, rather than letting her mosey along. When she's more forward, she'll have to work harder to get behind my leg. She barely got stuck at all, even in the sticky spot. After trotting both ways, we took a walk break before we tried canter. Then it thundered, loudly, directly overhead. We decided to call it a day.

I took Izzy back to the hitching post and started untacking her. Bear in mind, it was my first time trying to take a hunting breastplate off of a horse. I left her bridle on as I unhooked everything carefully. As soon as the last strap was done (the martingale from the noseband), rain started pouring down hard on the tin roof above us.

Let me just take a moment to say that while Izzy used to live in a covered run, she has lived out in the pasture with her friend for months now.

She panicked. She almost reared, ran back wards, shot forwards, almost reared again, and ran forward. Pretty much immediately, I reconciled myself to the fact that my saddle was going to take a hard fall into the mud and I began to plan to get her away from it when it did so she couldn't step on it and break the tree.

Fortunately, that went as planned. After the saddle came off, I managed to steer her into the arena and close the gate, then get the bridle and martingale off before she panicked again.

That went pretty well, all things considered. Neither she nor I was hurt. The tack was dirty, but not damaged. I left her in the arena to run around and be silly while I picked up my muddy tack. After it was all put away, I got my halter and caught my now-sheepish and soaked pony.

Silly girl.

PS TACK SALE TOMORROW! I don't know if I need anything, but I'm going because I'm a nerd and I love tack... seriously. I can't touch leather products at stores, or I want them.