Hello Cappi my old friend

Moohahaha, now you'll have that song stuck in your head for a week.

We're suffering the revenge of February, as a batch of nadger-freezing air direct from Canada keeps us all from enjoying the extra hours of sun. I went to dressage last night all y-bundled up, silk tights and fleece breeches and three sweaters under a fleece jacket and down vest, gloves on my icy claws and a pair of chemical packs tucked into my boots (in vain, because when the mercury drops too far, my lamesauce corpuscles won't be tempted past the knee line for anything short of booze-induced capillary dilation). The indoor ring isn't heated, but it blocks the wind and is generally bearable for the riders if not the instructor.

After my long hiatus from dressage, it was a nervous joy to be back with Cappi. Joy because he's fun, nervous because who knows what he'd been up to while I was off. Smoking! Drinking! Lascivious conversation and crim con! Needless worries, as it turned out. He didn't display any bad habits, even when horse A spooked at invisible tigers, causing horse B to ditch his rider in sympathy, causing the horse C to flee the commotion, thereby convincing horse D that he was next on the bogeyman's menu. But Cappi, who had been trotting along, flicked an ear at the noise, slowed to a walk on my cue, and then sighed. Sighed. This is the same horse who three months ago would climb trees if a deer walked within a mile of the gate? The horse who would panic and flee if asked to work away from the other horses? The horse who to this day gives his Western riders fits? I do not pretend to understand. I am only grateful. I confess that I truly love getting him to bend and flex and show off. Pat's trying to make things more difficult for us so that he has to listen and can't assume he knows what he's supposed to do, so the class is never dull, but Cappi seems to have found his groove in dressage.

Apart from the cold fingers, what I really don't like about lessons in the winter is dealing with the blankets, which cannot be laundered every day and inevitably smell of urine (reason one, there are straps under the belly and the horse can't exactly hold them out of the way when nature calls; reason two, the horses lie down in their stalls, wherein they've usually relieved themselves). The blankets are big and bulky, so you have to sort of heave them up and wrestle them into place, and then you have to reach under the horse's belly to get at the surcingles, and what with one thing and another it's nearly impossible not to end up smelling of horse wee. That's my story, anyway, and I'm sticking to it.