Can You Guess What Caused This?

I rode Rogo this morning, with a saddle since Doug wasn't here to lunge me bare back and Rogo is still too excited about it to go without a lunge line. We warmed up with 20 meter circles at the trot and canter both ways, and 1/4 line trot loops and things went great. I worked at keeping my left hand quiet and down, relaxing my hips, and keeping my legs still. Rogo is staying nicely forward for me.

After the warm up I started practicing the canter parts of Training Level test 3, but Rogo kept turning sideways almost into a half pass. What on earth? There wasn't any spookiness, but he was cantering at  a 45 degree angle! I tried trot - same thing. It was just bizarre. Walk - same thing. Back to canter and sideways it was. Have you guessed the cause yet? I didn't until we halted, and I was on him. We halted and he turned almost 90 degrees. I pushed him forward, straightened him out and asked for halt again. Again he whipped his hind quarters around to face another direction. Then the light bulb came on - yes - a very windy rain squall had blown in while we were working and he was trying to put his hind quarters into the wind and rain! Ha ha, he's so funny. He has far higher expectations of my common sense than is warranted. Why would we be staying out in the rain? Why would we be riding into it? Clearly the thing to do is turn ass end into in and hunker down.

To his credit he didn't try to head for the barn or stop working at all, he just wanted to get into a proper wind and rain position :)  I hadn't realized it, but I haven't ridden him in heavy wind/rain outside before. When it started raining I thought "this could happen at a show, so I'll stay out for a few minutes", but I still didn't put two and two together re the unaided and unasked for lateral work until we did a couple of halts. Poor baby didn't want rain driving into his eyes and I don't blame him. He was just following his instincts.

Doug came back by the end of the ride and although I didn't know it he was standing in the upstairs door laughing and taking pictures. Here's one of us walking in so you can see the slightly disgusted look on Rogo's face :)

You can also see I lost a shoe (it's in my hand). I was expecting this to happen with all the rain we've had - lots of deep mud in places. The call is in to the farrier.