My boy Ascension (I need to practice calling him that) has some of the most expressive eyes I’ve seen on a horse. They’re big, liquid-brown windows to his soul.

Last Friday, I showed up in the barn dark-and-early at 6 am to do chores. Typically my horse is happy to see me and trots up to me with ears pricked and looking for treats (he has learn to do that with manners, by the way). But this time he blinked his bleary eyes a few times, and stood on the other side of the arena staring at me. I could almost see him cocking his head. He was very obviously saying, “What in the world are you doing here, mom? You NEVER come here this early.” I had to walk up to him for his greeting forehead rubs. And he kept kinda looking at me like I was crazy. But then I stuck him in his stall and gave him his breakfast and he decided he liked seeing me first thing in the morning.

The next few days I was quite sick, but Dave and Tracie were gone, so I took care of all the animals. By the next day, Ace had gotten over the shock of seeing me in the early hours of the day. Then it was back to insistent whickering … “Feed me, woman!”

With my being quite under the weather, Ace got a whole week off from doing any work. Typically he gets rusty after just 2-3 days off, so I was worried we’d have to go back to the drawing board when we rode last night.

I got to the barn around 6 (pm) and started doing chores. Like normal, Ace walked up to me to say hi as soon as I arrived.

But he’s smart, and he knew that me showing up in boots and breeches meant that I wasn’t there just to feed him this time. He kept his ears at half mast and wrinkled his eye lids in his worried/annoyed look. I wasn’t thrilled to see that look, because it usually means he’s going to misbehave and be a pain in my butt.

After finishing up the barn chores, I tied him up in his stall for grooming. He relaxed and happily took a nap while I scratched him and unearthed an avalanche of dust from his coat (and even a few loose hairs! He’s ever so slightly starting to shed!).

I tacked him up, and he took his usual moment to sniff the saddle and pads before I set them on his back. He kicked his back leg a few times to show his annoyance at his brushing boots (he seemed to have the tiniest big of swelling above his pastern, but was sound). And he followed me willingly out of his stall.

Ace still had his wrinkled eye-lid look as I lunged him a few times around both directions. But he was listening to me and his ears were up.

So I tightened his girth, stuck on his bridle, and swung up. He moved right off, easily responding to my leg cues for forward and even sideways when he was bulging and running me into the wall. I asked for trot and he moved right off at the first squeeze, and kept going.

It was like he hadn’t had any time off at all.

I only managed to ride for about 15 minutes before the dust and my cough forced me to uncermoniously hop out of the saddle.

Through my coughing, I rubbed Ace all over to let him know he was a good boy. It was exciting to discover that his lessons are starting to cement themselves in his brain, so that even after time off he continued to respond and go just like he had been.

We’re on track to start a little under saddle cantering very soon! In the meantime, I’m going to take some of Jane Savoie’s advice about sensitizing Ace to my leg. I just found out she had a blog, and you can imagine how thrilled I was when the first new post to show up in my feed reader had to do with getting your horse in front of your leg! This is definitely a blog worth subscribing to if you haven’t already.

Now I just need to kick this cough so that I can actually manage to ride for more than a few minutes…