How long is long enough?

Tonight I had an hour. One hour total, from stepping out of the car at the farm to stepping back in. The kids had been promised we'd go bowling, and between supper, the inevitable teen cry of, "I have to do my hair!" before leaving the house, and getting the horses called up, my evening was a lot shorter than I'd initially planned. Funny how that seems to happen!

We had rain last night and all morning before it cleared, so it was hot and sticky and we arrived at the farm in the evening lull when the breeze dies and mosquitoes and heel flies attack in swarming droves. The horses were quick to come in, and while they were muddy from the rain earlier in the day, Sunny is too fastidious to be much of a wallower, so it was the matter of minutes to get him brushed off and tacked up.

H took over my camera, so she gets the photo credit.

The frog prince survived his horse encounter
unsquished, although it was a near thing.

After I convinced H to part with my camera for a bit, T took some video, but I neglected to tell him keep it short, so I'll have to see if I can edit it into short clips tomorrow. I got in about 15 minutes of nice circles and serpentines, but mosquitoes - is there a name for those hovering masses of bloodsuckers? A fog? A whine? A welt? Whatever you call them - they kept us up on the driveway and lower lawn where the grass was short. (I wish we could work up even a small bit of ground for an arena, but pasture's at too much of a premium.... gotta keep the sheep happy!) Staying out of the long grass did help a bit with the bugs, but not as much as Sunny'd have liked!

When I was through I tossed M up for a brief lead-line session, leaving just time to untack, brush & turn out before my hour was up.

M & Sunny get reacquainted

My quandary though, is this - is a 15-20 minute ride better than nothing, or am I just encouraging a short attention span? Do I continue ride on these shortened evenings and hope I can get something accomplished? Tonight our 15 minutes felt good, and brief sessions for groundwork - five minutes here, 20 slipped in there.... I have good results with those. But for under saddle work, I suspect that when I consistently don't have enough time to spend, I'm ending up ingraining a lack of work ethic. I really don't want that. I know some of you out there ride on tighter schedules than mine - what's your answer? Is an occasional long working session enough to keep things in tune? Indoor arena, lights (wishful thinking...)? Or am I worrying for nothing?