Show prep.

There is more mane pulling, bathing, and clipping going on around the barn than there has been in a long time. Claire even went so far as to dye her horse's sunbleached mane and tail with foils. (Yeah, it was a sight.) Allannah is stressing over rendezvous points for the riders, Sabrina is having polo shirts embroidered, and I am just trying to keep up.

Berky got the bath to end all baths today, down to using whitening shampoo on the teeny patches on his heels. I pulled his mane to a mohawkish 3" to facilitate braiding and trimmed the scraggled hair on his tail, and then practiced braiding. I'm using more of a button braid type thing than the typical hunter style, instructions courtesy of Brittany and Anky van Grunsven.

Lesson tomorrow, finally. Our new 2' rolltop was just delivered,and I think it's probably going to be incorporated. Just a feeling. It's all wood, so Sabrina and Karen had to load it into a truck and drive it into the arena, which was pretty amusing.

Ugh I'm stressing out. Berky was sore through his back yesterday, which is why he got today off complete with a once-over from the massage therapist. I think I figured out the problem, though: I usually ride with two pads or just my fleece pad and a wither pad, but the past two rides I rode with a plain quilted pad while the others were being cleaned. Let's hope that was the problem.