Fancy Pants

 Today was a fun day! It's the 4th of July! We celebrated at the lake yesterday to avoid the crowds so today was home day. Mike and I spent the morning getting the old broken electric wire down and putting up new holders for it. Then I met Kelli at Ashland for a ride. And after my ride, we bush hogged the rest of the pasture. Holy moly our new farm has grass!!! Anyways... back to Dan... :) 

We started with some dressage. We worked on our lateral work and our canter transitions a little bit. I didn't really get too far into our canter work when Kelli said she was done because Marvin was being so good! So cool... she didn't mind if I kept riding. So I moved to the big arena and did some trot half pass, which felt decent. Then we did some canter work. We did our counter canter. We started with the shallow loop and then did the full loop. And it was actually quite nice! I was even able to slightly change the bend and he stayed mostly upright instead of leaning and careening. Yay! Then we tried some more three loops with simple changes. That's a work in progress. He's getting to where he's skipping or taking too many steps or trotting a little. Especially one direction. We played with it but struggled. We either get a round transition or a prompt transition. OR... we get a prompt transition but with flair! Hee hee. Too prompt! Oh well. We played with it some and it got a hair better. Then we did some medium trots across the diagonal. Kelli made a suggestion that was brilliant! I'd been working so hard on riding him up, so he wasn't just running.... that I was holding him and while he was up, he wasn't really reaching. She suggested I swing my seat more. And oh yeah... like the swing set!. So I tried it. And wow!!!! It felt pretty amazing!!! Kelli said it looked amazing too. yay! I'll have to remember that! So then we did a canter half pass each way and he held it and it wasn't too bad. Yahoo!! So, maybe we'll show 3-1 at the Ashland show just for fun and tell the judge we're aiming for simple changes and we know we'll get bad scores. ;) 

Then we went for a nice long hack. It was fun! Although down by squallor hollow there was some rapid fire gun fire or fireworks that went off. But then it was quiet. Of course then we kept seeing things move out of the corner of our eyes. It was a little spooky.... like we were being surrounded by crazy clowns or... ewoks! And the horses were a little jumpy, but not freaked out. And then... I am guessing Dan's foot slid on a tree root or something but it seriously sounded like a clown horn! And it sounded like it was coming from between Dan and Marvin rather than underneath Dan. heee heee. Freaky! But we didn't die....  we didn't even see any clowns. Or ewoks. :) It was a great ride!