Surprise Camp!
Friday, November 24, 2023 - 9:05 PM
AAAAAHHHHHHH-HA-HA-HA-HA...! WEEELLLLLLL...! If I'd known I'd be working a camp day today I would've made some very different choices last night! Namely, I probably wouldn't have drunk almost an entire bottle of wine by myself...!
So...! Yeah! Yesterday was nice, I made shepherd's pie (technically cottage pie cuz nope, not paying extra for lamb...!) for Thanksgiving, had a lovely day with my mates, and it was super nice! Also I drank an entire bottle of red wine, minus the cup that went into the shepherd's pie, by myself. We hung out, watched Voyager, and just had a nice, chill day together. Went to bed late, because though I was scheduled to work today, there was nothing in the schedule, so I figured I'd roll up this afternoon and do barn chores.
Fast forward to 7am this morning, when I'm woken by a call from my boss. "Whoops! Did I forget to tell you that we have a Thanksgiving Break camp today? Yeah, you need to go get there and get the horses ready and check in the campers by 9!" Feck! Yeah, no, no one told me. So I shove my shit to work, catch the horses, get them tacked up as quick as possible, and contemplate whether I'll be upchucking the entire contents of my insides soon. Fortunately, trailering the horses from the pastures we keep them in to the park we do lessons and stuff out of gave me long enough sitting and not moving too much to get over the worst of that.
Fortunately, there were only 3 kids. 9am to 2pm is still a pretty long time to babysit alone, but at least I had horses to entertain them with. My boss had given me the go-ahead to let them ride twice, so I was able to let them know we'd do lessons before and after lunch, and we were able to fill the rest of the time with visiting the pond and meeting some probably abandoned pet ducks, graining, watering, and cleaning up after the horses, and them grooming the horses, on top of snack and lunch. So it all worked out.
They liked me, and I certainly don't think that they were the "little monsters" A described them as, though the two older ones did have an adversarial best friend dynamic I didn't love, and one was pretty demanding and liked to play the why game, even though she's a bit old for it. Look, kid, don't ask me about why we stand when the horses pee while we're riding them if you don't want to know the answer! But overall they were fine and did well. A hadn't let them trot Wednesday, and we didn't have a camp session yesterday, cuz national holiday, and I didn't quite realize how far behind where I'd expected them to be, so we did a lot of back-tracking in the first lesson to get them up to speed after the first round of "What the fuck is happening right now," trotting.
We started the second lesson with a short trail ride, where I climbed on Lucky to lead them on the 20 minute trail. Buuut I'd also brought Milly, because I like her and will take any excuse to do something with her (I'd already hopped on and used her as a demo horse in the morning lesson), but I didn't trust her on the trail. So we head out, hear her crying, I feel bad for having her stuck alone, and then the whinny is louder than it should be. Nearer. We look behind us, and there Milly is, bringing up the rear of our little trail ride and looking very pleased with having untied herself. So, I swung off and ponied her from Lucky's back the rest of the way out and back. She did fine! And I liked having her on there, honestly. ^_^ Gives me a good way to trust her more on a trail. I'd really like to take her on trails, myself. Fuck, I'm in so much trouble with that horse.