Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Friends Are Great

Awesome spider giraffe. 
The great Sprinklerbandit came over yesterday too watch me and the Baconator go, and see how we liked one of her saddles. The ogilvy half pad seemed to make it work rather nicely, so I climbed onto my horse from my porch (where the hell is my mounting block BLAKE). Whatever. At least I have a porch.
All aboard!
Surprisingly, she was really lazy and not all that responsive. She hadn't been ridden for a couple of days, and the weather had cooled down significantly (think 60's) so I was expecting my fire breathing dragon. Nope! I had to keep squeezing and pushing to get her going forward. We had some alright work going all three gates both ways. But I looked out into the field and saw our lonely blue barrel and wondered if my horse would jump it by itself.
The moo dog makes sure we behave accordingly.

Love the right lead canter.

She did.
First hop over the barrel!

Take that you stupid blue bastard.
I am going to remind you that I really love this pony and I think she is awesome. I hope you think so too. We approached it some more, but we weren't quite getting all the way over, as she would duck her shoulder out right before. Totally my fault. The bandit pointed out where I was going wrong (keeping my leg on, softly guiding her to the jump and sitting still) and she became a rock star. This is why it is so great to have friends, especially friends who can help you ride better!
Racehorse mode.

So excited to eat up the barrel.
She set up a small combination for us, which included our small barrel jump with a one stride to what started out as poles on the ground and later turned into a vertical. That was my first time jumping two consecutive jumps, and it felt easy and fun. Same for Bacon as well. It was too bad that the standards that Blake had built for me over the weekend weren't quite ready yet, or we would add in another jump.
Saddle seat is a bit big, but my position is better!

Weeeeeee

I can't wait to do it again!
Vroom!

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