OMG It’s Freaking Hot Out Here

On Sunday, we waited to go to the barn until later afternoon because it had gotten insanely hot out. I don’t like the heat. I also don’t like being cold so the Bay Area is generally a good place for me. However, it was like 90+ degrees on Sunday. We went up to the arena to practice our arena work for once. We’ve been so busy lately that we’ve been out trail riding or taking a lesson and independent practice has slipped us by.

The arena had been completely cleaned out so we had to set some jumps and trot poles. We parked Shasta and Nilla and then played Red Light Green Light (the Super Mario Ghost Game). Basically every time we turned our backs to place a standard or move a pole, they would move. When we’d look back, they’d be standing still like perfect angels. Shasta broke the rules a few times and just wandered off looking for food even with us watching so we had to place her back. I would say their parking skills are like a C.

By the time we had placed jumps, we were already sweating. We each rode around warming up for like 15 minutes and decided it was too freaking hot to accomplish anything. So I had my husband hop on Nilla and take her over the little cross-rail, because damn it we went through all the work of setting that up we had better use it for something.

Then we untacked and I spent time trying to spray dirt out of Nilla’s wounds. We skipped riding on Monday entirely as it was actually 100+ degrees. We waited until close to 7pm to even go feed them and it was still grossly hot. This heat is why I complained all winter about the mild temperature; I knew we’d pay for it in the end.