Fall is here, sadly.

Sadly, the end of summer has "officially" come to an end. About three weeks ago, the "unofficial" end of summer came after Labor Day. Here in Minnesota, most primary schools start the day after Labor Day and that's kinda when everyone starts wrapping things up - closing down the cabins, bringing in the boats, removing the docks. However, due to Mother Nature's generosity, we had an extended summer with temperatures still reaching the 80s yet last week. Now, it's frigid. Well, relatively speaking.

So, yesterday I had my first ride on Gus in nearly a week. He STILL has not had his hooves done - it's been 9 weeks today. Rumor has it, the farrier will be able to do him on Friday. Fingers MAJORLY crossed that he'll finally get reset then. Otherwise, I think I'll need to find someone else. And as much as I love female J, she just didn't go a good job with Gus ... so I'll have to ask the vet for a recommendation. I suppose I should find out from B if I can even have an outside farrier come. I've always just used who the barn provided because they did adequate work.

Anyways, back to yesterday's ride. Despite the fact that the ground was hard as rocks and Gus was three weeks overdue, he was actually really, really good. He tripped quite a bit due to his long toes (and loose shoes) but he was a trooper.

We rode outside in the cross-country field and basically worked on the canter - and the trot. The trot is coming along nicely - we're working hard on getting a nice "jog" trot versus a nice working trot that you'd get in the "english" ring. With a slower trot, Gus is able to stay more balanced and rocked on back on his hindquarters. If he goes too fast, he just falls flat on his face (aka forehand).

The canter was REALLY nice. Granted we had quite a few trips and hiccups (mainly with his backend) but I think those were all related to the ground and the desperate need to be reset. He was willing to bring the canter back to a nice, slow canter and seemed to stay up in the bridle, least for the most part.

I brought my camera with me today, so I'm hoping to snap a few shots of Gus outside ... Still need to figure out a time to have M (another boarder) meet me at the barn to take photos of me riding Gus. She was the only one who volunteered to be my photog for the day. Super excited!

Gringo's been on the back burner as of late. He's also 9 weeks out, post-trim and will be getting his hooves spiffed up next Friday (so at 10 weeks). He doesn't seem to have too many issues stemming from infrequent trims, although once he's back at B's he'll be on a 8 week schedule, I think. J, female J, will be doing Gringo. I asked her the last time I saw her and she said she would. She has a lot more patience then the other J, and she's a female. I'm hoping her and Gringo will work out okay.

Hopefully, I'll have a bunch of photos to post here in the following days. I took a couple nice ones on my cell phone last night, but haven't uploaded them yet.

ETA: Finally got those long awaited photos uploaded. Here's a recap of some images from our ride.