Good Fancy pony

Today was a great day! I got to ride all 3 ponies!

I started with Danomite. We walked up to the arena and did a little bit of pillar work on our way up there. I didn't lunge him today so we got on and did our walk warm up and our stretchy work. Jean and the interns were riding when I first got in there but they left after about 10 minutes and were jumping in the far end of the arena. I still had the small dressage arena set up and wanted to practice my test so it worked out well. 

After a brief warm up we ran through the test. It wasn't bad considering. We've kind of lost our medium trot and our canter lengthen on a circle was a little chaotic. So then we went back to work and worked on getting him to not be so strung out and sit more. And I think it helped because we then were able to get a good medium trot (or at least a lengthen) and our canter lengthens got much better. I need to make sure I set the canter up first though. His working canter needs to be an actual working canter instead of a slightly strung out canter. Then it's easier to show a difference. And he's much more balanced. We then played with our canter itself and he's getting so nice and collected in it. We got a few good canters to walks. Not perfect yet, but getting closer. To accomplish that we did some 12 meter canter circles into the walk. Helpful. Then we played with the trot halfpass and he was so good we called it quits! 

 

I'm trying really hard to not push him past his fitness level and get him to a fatigue state. So today, he was great and then he started to get a little fatigued so we did one more thing and quit. We hacked back to the barn and because I wanted to ride the others and we had Dr. Febles coming to do teeth, we just untacked vs going around the neighborhood. 

He got a good report card on his teeth.. minus the wear. I know... he scrapes them on the stall bars, the concrete posts, etc. I even told her that when he does it I tell him that he's "going to piss of Dr. Febles!". Hee hee. And after he was done, I finished clipping him. He still has lines and it's still not as good as I would like, but it'll have to do. I tidied up the blade marks from the bum drive blade thingy as best as I could.