Wednesday and Thursday:

(Oops, didn't mean to wait that long. I was hoping to get more media but was only partially successful)
I’m writing about both together because Wednesday is also a planned day off so we’ll go through it quick!

Wednesdays are planned to be a chores/food prep/grocery shopping/house cleaning evening together for me and my boyfriend. We do shift this day around sometimes if one of us has set plans on a Wednesday but we try to be really consistent with it. We used to do this on the weekend but we’d keep putting it off until it was Monday morning and having a mid-week check in is pretty nice. My boyfriend climbs and is more of an extrovert than me so does after work happy hours or hangs out with friends in the evenings. I go to the barn 3 evenings a week so it’s nice to actually see each other between the weekend :)

Thursday is currently planned to be a lunge day. There are a few reasons for it to be scheduled this way right now, one of which is that we’re both gaining fitness so a planned lunge day means that Katai is still working but not needing to deal with me on her back. Because she isn’t also trying to balance me or carry me I’ve been focusing on helping her with her balance and endurance. I rotate right now between a lunge work day and a PT lunge. For the work day I’ve been working her with the Vienna reins to make sure she isn’t just locking up through her back and then we do patterns, at least as much as you can do on the lunge. These patterns include spiraling in and out, 10, 15, and 20 meter circles, going down the long side, and just lots of transitions. For all of these things I’m focusing on how she’s using her body and if she drops down into a transition on the forehand we redo it. Sometimes I put down ground poles and walk/trot/canter her over those as well.

On PT lunge days I lunge her in a halter and focus on really getting her stretching out and down and on really making sure she’s bending. I also usually do a bunch of in hand work before lunging including front leg stretches, carrot stretches, backing with her head lowered, etc. Right now this is a decent amount of the time we’re working together but will continue to be a smaller percentage of the work over the next few weeks. Sometimes I’ll even go back to the in hand work in the middle of when I'm lunging her for a bit if I notice that she’s especially tight somewhere.

The plan is that within the next month or so this will switch to a riding day and it will likely be more of a work day. I need to figure out what exactly I’ll have scheduled that day once I get closer but I will be changing this to a riding day. I will still be doing lunging and stretches etc. but will be moving it to Friday and doing both spa stuff and lunging stuff that day. This will most likely be more of a halter lunge and less of a work lunge at least until she gains a lot more fitness.