Camp Day 2

Today was based around the same structure as yesterday. When we were gathered in a circle in the garage, we were all given a designated place in the barn to groom and tack up, which we would be in for the rest of the week. I got to go in the inside wash stall, which is near the front of the barn and set back from the main aisle. I got this because of Annie's sensitivity near hear butt, but I was happy too because it's a little bit away from the chaos of the rest of the barn. We also shared what would be our dream vacation with horses. I said mine would be to go trail riding in the mountains. I think that would be really fun. After that we groomed, tacked up, and got on our horses in the ring.

Today was a fun day for riding. It wasn't as hot and humid as yesterday either, and it felt pretty nice in the shade. Even Annie wasn't too cranky. After warming up, we did some relays. We split into a Green Team and a Red Team (I was on Green) and we went over the rules for the first relay. Both teams had two white barrels at each end of the ring. We had a bucket, a glue stick, and a list of horse related items on the first barrel, and a horse magazine on the other. We had to trot (or walk or canter, it didn't matter) over some poles until we got to the barrel at that end of the ring, dismount, and flip through the magazine until we found the picture of an item on the list. Then we had to rip out the picture and walk our horses back to our teammates, where we had to get back on our horse. The next person after you couldn't go until you were back on your horse. Once we had pictures of all the items on our list inside our bucket, we had to glue them all onto a piece of paper. The first team to glue on all the items won. My team ended up winning too! It took a while, and it was hard to find some pictures in the magazine, but it was definitely a lot of fun (even though Annie was pretty annoyed at me for getting on and off of her so many times).

The second relay went a lot faster. There were two lines of poles set up, one for each team, with a small cup on the first one. We had to line up single file with our teammates, and move at a trot along one side of the poles. The first person had to move the cup from the first pole to the second, the second person had to move the cup from the second pole to the third, and so on. If you got the cup to the last pole without dropping it or skipping a person, you won. But if you dropped it, you had to get off your horse to pick up the cup, get back on your horse, get back in line, and start the whole thing over again. If a person missed getting the cup, the whole line had to loop around and continue from where they left off. I'm not really sure we even had a winner for this relay. We ended up practicing it so many times that we didn't really compete against the other team. That's okay though, because it was so fun to do and really funny if someone dropped the cup. Luckily I had thought to bring my water bottle up today, so I took some breaks to just sit and drink.

After the relays, we got to do some cantering. We took turns though, so one group stayed in what used to be the small ring while the other got to be in what used to be the big ring. I attempted to get Annie to do a right lead canter, but we only got it once. It's better than nothing, I guess! It was really fun to just fly around that ring though, without too many people getting in the way.

This time when we went down to untack I wasn't too tired or dehydrated. I got Annie back to her paddock with no major problems, and then we went up to eat lunch. After that we went back to the garage to finish up our jewelry boxes. I ended up putting a lighter green trim around the edges of my box. After hanging out for a while, we got to go over to the neighbor's pool that we were going to go to yesterday. I didn't feel like swimming, because it actually wasn't that hot out, so I sat with some other girls on the edge of the pool with my feet in the water. It was a nice time to just sit and talk in the shade. We left a little early to go back to the barn, where we could either color in the garage or watch someone free lunge the horse Janie. I chose to color for an hour. That pretty much ended my day. I would say today was much more enjoyable because I was more comfortable, and it wasn't as hot. I'm hoping tomorrow we get to ride bareback because it's super fun. I should have time to blog about camp tomorrow, so check back here then!