She Works Hard For The Money

Y'all.

Guess how much I just paid in board this month?

-$11.00.

Yes. That's a NEGATIVE SIGN in front of that figure.

Feels good to know that working my ever-loving butt off at the barn all last month paid off in a big way!

In other news, summer has arrived in Pennsylvania and it's been in the low 90's the past couple days, and huuuuumid. It's like breathing in a swamp.

So, with all of the intelligence that God has bestowed on me, I decide that I'm just going to keep riding at my usual time of around 4pm. When the heat index is highest. Because that's a smart thing to do. Right? I mean, I ate a salty snack and drank lots of water before I rode, so I was good to go! In theory.

And totally ignoring the fact that my slug-pony was trying to tell me that it's too dang hot to work and pushing us both to do our normal workout anyway was totally a good choice.

Or not.

I've repeatedly made myself sick by riding too hard in the hottest, most humid part of the day, and I think I finally learned my lesson yesterday when I quit after a successful jumping exercise, and immediately felt dizzy, nauseous, and tingly all over. To avoid passing out and falling off my pony, I got off right away and motored us both into the wash stall, STAT.  It took me at least 15 minutes to stop breathing hard and start to cool down, with the help of cold water (hose the pony, hose myself) and a cooling towel from Jess.

That is not an experience I'd like to repeat, so I'm going to start riding in the evenings when it's that hot out. Plus Dino was not a fan of working hard in tropical temps either, and it's not fair to try and push him for his best performance when I clearly can't even keep myself together.

Moral of the story: Listen to your body. Don't try to be a tough guy.