DNA and Chia

Good Morning! I finally obeyed my alarm clock and jumped out of bed at 5:00 a.m. Once I'm out of bed I'm good to go- usually I follow through with whatever activity I had planned for the morning- it's the actual swinging my legs over the side of the bed part that seems to be the problem. Anyway, I was successful with my leg swinging, hit the carpet running. After a great cup of coffee, I had a 45 minute workout on the treadmill and then did a core exercise for 15 minutes. Right afterward, headed out to the barn for feeding and turnout. This morning I had to pull some hairs from Cristy's mane to send to U.C. Davis Genetic Lab to be tested for HYPP. She has been having episodes of muscle twitching and spasms- vet came out yesterday to do spring (!!!!!!spring!!!!!!!) shots and checked her out for me. Vet drew blood, will do a full blood screening and suggested that I have the HYPP test. I hope we find something in these tests, even if it is HYPP positive. At least I can treat it if I know what it is.

As for Montana, she has been taking it easy the last couple of days. My work schedule has kept me from riding- and last night not only was it too cold- 12 degrees- but they had just had their shots- I wouldn't want to be ridden either.

I haven't blogged about our amazing ride on Sunday- Lori came over and helped me with a jump school. Montana and I did grid work:

We started out with a 9' ground pole to cross rail and ended up with this bounce exercise:

9' ground pole to crossrail to 2' verticle to crossrail to ground pole.

That was about max for my indoor arena, I could maybe have fit another bounce in there- maybe next time! She was super good through it- very forward and really rocked back and launched up over them. She looked at the second cross rail the first time through and then rocketed over it- I felt like I hovered in the air for a split second- and then regrouped and came around again. It was nice to have someone there to set the poles for us- usually I'm dismounting and dragging things around and then mounting and then dismounting and, well you get the idea.

I'm shooting for a dressage ride tonight- Montana has some stiffness to the right- we'll pull out our 101 dressage exercises and try something differant tonight and work on suppling in that direction. Maybe I'll even get a run in- it's supposed to warm up. We'll see! Right now I'm sipping my blackberry, strawberry, blueberry, banana, soy milk and chia seed smoothie that Ricky just made me. It's just sooooo good!!! I read that chia seeds are supposed to be great for energy and just about everything that's wrong with me! I'll let you know . . .