Tuesday's Snowy Walk and American Football

KT cancelled her lesson on Tuesday due to snow. I was a little annoyed because she didn't call me, I had to call her, and then she said, "It's not that I'm scared to ride in the snow, it's not good for the horse to slip." I said, "There's no ice, it's just snow." But she refused. I was more annoyed that yet another week is going by without the horse getting ridden, and in my mind that means another week closer to selling her and not fixing her.

In sheer defiance I decided to take Mara out on the trails for a walk, to see how bad it was. I brought a lunge line because I didn't think we'd run into any ice. I was right. There was only one place I slipped, and it was mud under snow and I would have slipped there with our without snow. Mara never slipped, she was fine. In fact, she seemed really peaceful in the muted forest.

She kept stopping to snack on trees, which I allow because this is a really good expression of confidence for her. Usually she's to nervous to think about eating.



"Eat the tree Mara!" She seemed to really enjoy the trees, and often they were pushed onto the trail from the weight of snow, blocking our way, so she couldn't resist.






You can see I make her carry her own lunge line - it's also easiest to use the surcingle to attach her long lead rope to because it has no snap. Here she is discovering no grass underfoot. This is a tiny little slanted clearing that is occasionally mown but usually left wild.  Also in this photo you can see my horse has not lost any weight with the season. Easy keepers aren't much fun to feed - she doesn't need anything extra.



Like my tie job with the rope? I should have given her more slack because a few times she tried to trot and hit the end of it.



Despite how deep the snow is (knee high for me in places), walking circles for about 5 minutes never raised her respiration. I was hoping for more of an aerobic effect for fatty.



She was so relaxed, she just stopped and started eating this tiny pine tree. I trusted her more than usual and sat on a small log on the ground, getting wet from the snow, but enjoying her calmness.



Our headline says "Higher penalties for driving without Winter tires." Right - insurance will not pay if you crash without Winter tires, so I'm only driving J's car when he gets home. Kind of proving to us that we don't need two cars when I'm unemployed. But note the upper left corner of the newspaper. That's something you don't see in Germany.



I cannot overstate how odd this is. OK how often have you opened up your local American newspaper and seen a big article about European soccer? Never, right? In 8 years I've never seen American Football in our papers or in the news; of course not, Europe simply doesn't care about this almost exclusively American sport. So it was pretty amazing to open up the paper and see this. J said a German guy was on the winning team, and since he's from this region (Rheinland), they printed an article. I tripped out a bit.



Mercer showing long rear claws.



Mara showing deep collateral grooves and good contact.



Bellis showing a typical donkey print.



Mara has a bruise on her hoof  : (



Minbari or George Washington?