Small successes and a fail

This will be quick because unfortunately I have been, and still am, extremely busy at work.  My duties have changed slightly and I am much busier than before.  Anyway, after emailing with 5 other people, none of which set up a time to ride, I finally found a riding buddy!  She is now RB4, or at least she appears to be and time will tell if she keeps coming out.  She finally was able to come out last night and ride and it went really well. She lives about 10 mins away and has ridden dressage in the past and currently rides english when she rides, which currently is infrequently.  She is wanting to get back into shape so she can start training one of her horses, I am okay with being used that way lol.

She has a good base of skill and was able walk, trot and canter the TWH without too much issue.  It took her a while to get him to trot but then he would pick it up right away which made me happy.  She is certainly rusty but I think she will get it back in no time at all.  She is planning on coming out on Saturday and we will go riding again, I am looking forward to a frequent visit from her.

The fail is our planning, again.  Last March we had gutters installed on the arena and it was money very well spent.  SO dug a shallow trench and had installed a plastic drainage pipe to direct the water to the opposite side of the arena which slopes away from the pastures.  Unfortunately he didn't dig the trench nearly deep enough and the horses collapsed the pipe in no time at all.  Back in the fall we dug a dry well to hold the water, about 3.5 feet deep and about 3 feet wide.  Almost immediately we saw it wasn't deep enough as during steady rain the area in front of the arena would get extremely wet and eventually I could see water streaming out from the ground where the dry well sits. Well damn.

Last night we rode in the arena and the winter pasture was boot-sucking muddy, this morning when I went to turn out I found the front quarter of the arena had flooded.  It seems my driving the tractor into the arena to drag had created a trench through the mud and a LOT of water welcomed itself into my arena.  It was about 2 inches deep in some places, ugh!  I spent 25 mins creating new mud trenches to direct the water away from my arena and then one in the arena to try to direct the water to the side of the arena where it will hopefully drain.  Guess I need to rent small backhoe to redo this, just another thing on my list.