Celebration Weekend

 So... I'm back home from my acupuncture finals and have been busting my butt playing catch up, but.. I had the weekend off and I celebrated!

 Saturday I had a lesson with Beth at Ashland. It was fun. We were dusty, but.. it was fun. We had a jump lesson and there was some miscommunication regarding dibs on the arenas, but it all worked out. We started off in the jump field over some stadium fences that were set up. There were two on a circle so we worked on that. Like I said, we were dusty.. rusty.. whatever. We kept losing that right shoulder so he was drifting and hanging his legs and jumping loose. So Beth had me put both hands to the left to help keep him from drifting right and to help secure that right shoulder. And then.. once I got it... Holy moly!! Baby horse has hops!! He was jumping super round and basculing well over the fences. He was popping me out of the tack almost! Yay! Of course then we switched to the right lead and... I couldn't get it together. We were a hot mess. He was behind my leg, throwing the right shoulder out still, falling/leaning on my right leg, and I couldn't stay with him. I kept getting us underneath the fence or taking off from 2 strides away. Sigh. We had a moment of fixing the canter first where I got angry and we ended up doing 10 meter canter circles to get him off my inside leg and in front of my leg. And then it got a little better. 

Then we headed to the arena since it had emptied out at that point. It started out pretty okay but then he got a little tired and behind my leg again. Sigh. I was not helping him out at all. So then I got him a little more revved and we had a really nice round! It's not so much that he's running or fast... but he needs to be a bit more amped up. When he lopes around like a hunter school horse... he gets strung out and flat. But when I get him a little revved and really rock him back on his hiney and ride him into the bit, then he jumps beautifully! It wasn't as obvious that he was drifting but I was riding him in a more collected contact so therefore I kept him straighter. So yay. Lots of fun. 

Then I untacked him and took him to the lake for a swim. I hopped back on and pulled my boots off (as I was tired of them getting soaked too) and we headed to meet Missy at the lake. I figured he was tired enough that I would be brave. So we went for a nice canter along the edge of the cross country field to the lake. Wheee!!! He was great. Then I went to take a selfie and... OOPS!! My helmet was off!!! Oh man. What a good baby horse! We walked back and I got my helmet and then Missy and I had a fun time chilling in the lake. 


Wheeee!! Bareback canterin'


 Oh.. yeah, so apparently Danny doesn't skinny dip. Sigh.. Despite going bareback and hoping he'd go for a swim (as opposed to getting dragged in with the saddle on) he didn't. He did however drop and roll! I had to jump off and as he rolled, his head went underwater. :)












 So... on Sunday we went and picked up Liz and Forrest for a trip to Faussett Farms for a long trail ride. I was hoping that Sat would have tired him out, but nope. So after we got on, I had to do some "suicide Laps" up the hill a few times. Luckily Forrest was chill and just hung out while we burned off some excess energy. It was a great day after that. Danny was actually pretty good, probably because it was intense trail riding! Those hills are steep! I had forgotten how steep. Both up and down. The boys were great and were well matched. They could walk, trot, and canter happily together. The views were great and they had planted 300 acres of sunflowers so we got to ride by those. It was a fantastic day!

Sunflowers!!!