Ride anyway

 

Today was a glorious day!! That day that you just praise God for sharing and extra praise God that it's your day off too! I slept in a teeny bit... then I fed critters and took care of some things around the house. Then I loaded Dan up and we headed to Ashland to meet Kelli and Celeste. The plan was to do some dressage and then go for a hack. I got Dan bemering and then went to put his saddle on and..... whoops! No dressage saddle!! All I had was my jump saddle and Sarah's jump saddle. Oops! Well poo.... I really didn't want to jump today as we jumped Tuesday and then will jump Sunday. And I really wanted to do some dressage. Good news though... I had the thinline bareback pad, so.. bareback dressage it is! I was a little annoyed as I figured I wouldn't be able to do as much as I wanted, but... never fear! I actually did as much work as I would have with the saddle. The only difference is that poor Dan had to have me sit instead of post because my thighs were already sore from working out and there was no way I could post the whole ride. And that also meant that our lengthenings weren't as good, but that was okay. We only did two and left it at that. We had a good ride! We did leg yields, turn on the forehands and haunches, and we practiced our half pass at the trot and canter. The trot is getting better and the canter, well... it's a start! We had some really good walk to canter transitions and some really good canter to walk transitions! He's really starting to get good at the figure 8 simple changes. I'm hoping that he starts to realize that we go from right to left and left to right and that it's just easier to swap. But we'll see. It was a good ride. 

Then we went for an hour long hack. I ended up jumping a few XC fences on the way back, because... I couldn't help it! We did the small hanging log to the brush hanging log on the edge of the field. Then we did the roll top...then the up bank... and then the up bank to the big log.. and then he got a little rowdy so I reeled him in and we called it a day. :) He was a good monkey!

So.... yeah. :) Fun day! Then I came home and let them in the middle pasture and the lane to graze while I fixed some gates... emptied the dead squirrels (THREE!!!) from the water trough, and drug the arena. I worked out too. Oh, and dug up some daffodils from the pasture and moved them to the front yard. It was a great day off!!