I didn’t write anything about Wednesday’s hunt because it took me two days to dry out. (I’m referring to rainfall, not alcohol consumption). It’s always a tough decision whether to hunt on days with marginal weather forecasts. Frequently, if I decide not to go, I end up looking out my office window regretting my decision. If I’d been inside Wednesday afternoon, looking out at that rainfall, I wouldn’t have regretted it one bit. Today, on the other hand, was awesome.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The weather forecast was a little more optimistic than Wednesday’s. As I was weighing the go\/no-go decision, radar showed a shower system that would probably miss us if it continued tracking northeast, but would dump on us if it came due east. I opted for optimism, and began to wonder if I was going to regret that as a few drops of rain hit my truck windshield on the way to the meet. That was precisely how Wednesday’s wetness had started. Fortunately, those few drops were all we got today.<\/p>\n
\nI was a little dubious about footing conditions. We had torrential downpours Friday that brought some streams above flood stage, and the ground was slippery and squishy on Saturday. But it firmed up more than I expected today. It wasn’t dry by any means; it wasn’t hard to tell where we’d been. But it wasn’t bad enough to rule out jumping.<\/p>\n
\nAnd Arthur was a star today. Maybe I shouldn’t brag too much for fear of jinxing future outings. But we were really in sync. Arthur even got compliments on his jumping from the field master.<\/p>\n
\nAnd it was a good thing we were clicking today. After some moderately brisk work at the beginning, we got on a screaming flat-out coyote run. By the time our huntsman decided to call it quits, horses and riders were spent, and my flask was empty (always a good sign that it’s about quitting time).<\/p>\n
\nAt one point, as we were hacking back to the trailers, I looked behind me and saw three beautiful women, each holding a flask. Such is the stuff that dreams are made of.
\nI remembered a conversation a couple of years ago, when someone said “There’s nothing more beautiful than a woman with a full flask”, to which I responded “Especially when your own is empty”. It was definitely a beautiful sight today. But, even more than that, it was Arthur’s finesse that made the day. I love my horse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I didn’t write anything about Wednesday’s hunt because it took me two days to dry out. (I’m referring to rainfall, not alcohol consumption). It’s always a tough decision whether to hunt on days with marginal weather forecasts. Frequently, if I decide not to go, I end up looking out my office window regretting my decision.… Continue reading I Love my Horse<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-horseplay","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9mOtr-3W","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.redhorse.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}