Glorious Day

 I LOVE having two days off a week! It works so well for me, for Dan, for my life! I worked 14 hours yesterday, most of them with a horrid migraine. I did NOT puke though, so yay for that. So I needed today to recover. I slept well and slept in a teeny bit. Then I fed ponies with a beautiful sunrise. Then I came back inside and relaxed for a bit. I was chatting with friends on facebook and did some book keeping for work. I was planning on meeting Kelli and Peri at Ashland for a dressage school and then a trail ride. Unfortunately because of the impending possible bad weather, Lucy closed the arena's at Ashland in attempts to give them time to set up for the show this weekend. So... I decided to ride at home because I needed to run through our dressage tests. I felt bad that it meant I didn't get to trail ride with Peri, but... I really needed to run through 2-2 again. And while I missed riding with them, I'm so glad I didn't because we had a great day!

I moved most of the jumps to one side of the arena so that I had somewhat of a dressage arena to practice in. We warmed up with our lateral work and then we went to work. We did our haunches in and our shoulder in at the trot. We did some leg yield, some turn on the forehand at the walk, some reinback. And oh my gosh! He's getting good at the rein back. I actually don't even need to pull back on the reins at all. Just halt him, soften him, and then close my leg. And he backs up so nicely and round! We had some good canter transitions and worked on a little bit of haunches in. It's still SUPER hard going left but we got a teeny bit of haunches in. Then we ran through 2-2! ha ha. Good thing we practiced! It wasn't terrible, but we had some struggles. The left lead counter canter is super hard. And I couldn't remember if we were supposed to come down to a walk or a trot from the counter canter. Our canter lengthen was decent and then... our final one was AMAZING! Ha ha. Like, Dan WENT FOR IT! I was giggling. But he really is awesome and listened to my seat and came right back with me just tightening my core. I just have to keep my leg on too as we're still finessing the aids of stop vs collect. We had some good three loops once I realized that I needed to put my inside leg on in the downward and almost leg yield him as that's what helps him understand what I'm asking. So yay for that. Then he was all amped up and strutting so we did a little more work playing with the canter and then medium trots. Hee hee. He makes me giggle. I think he's having as much fun as me! Yay!

o then we headed back to the barn and grabbed Funny. I took her with us on a short neighborhood walk. They were both amazing!!! Dan was almost perfect! He's such a good big brother with her. She was super and brave and stayed with us. I barely had to touch the lead. We even met two trucks and a neighbor on a bike with his dog. She was super. We went to the tennis court field and even trotted a little. When we headed back Dan got a little bit bigger strided, but he was good. And then we stopped at the lake again and he heard a noise that sounded like a sprinkler. I don't know if it was sprinklers or if it was a bird, but he got a little jazzed up. He didn't jig but almost. But he held it together and we made it home without worrying Funny. GOOD BOY!