Oh Glorious Day!!
Dan and I had a blast today. He was spicy! We headed to Ashland and had the place to ourselves for most of our ride. It was a lovely spring day. Hot, but a nice cool breeze. And lovely in the shade. We hacked out and went to the Green lake after the steep hill. I heard dueling chain saws so I figured I would take Shadow Lane to cowpens instead of going to the Grass is Greener and Hooky trail. Good thing too because as we hit the Shadow Lane trail, they must have gotten sawed what they needed because it sounded like a giant tree fell! Luckily only I jumped. Dan didn't even flinch. Good pony.
We went to the hayfields and then trotted the gallop track. Well, most of it. I let him have a little breather at the end because then we picked up the canter! It was fun. He came out of the one hay field and into the other and put his head down and started bucking! Yeeehaw!! Daniel Floyd Breaux!!! But then he carried on. We cantered around and he got a few partial changes. So.. maybe that's a good sign??? Or maybe a bad one since they were only partials?? Then we took another breather and walked around taking photos because it was so gorgeous out. We did a bit more trotting and then headed to the lake.
He had a good bit of fun splashing about. It was refreshing. Then we walked up the path in the woods to the cross country field. On the way he stopped and started nosing the ground. Oh... he found the dropped "tulips" from the tulip tree and proceeded to suck them all down. Ha ha. Such a weird little hoover. Then we did our water treadmill therapy. He cracked me up because as we were walking across the middle, I guess maybe a tadpole poked him... because he leapt up and bucked! Hee hee. And that water was deep! We then turned to go the other direction after our 3 or 4 laps and he did it again! Sir! ha ha. We had fun trotting in the water though. I do think it really helps him lift his back so I need to start doing that with the girls too!
Then we headed up the hill to the arenas because I wanted to do a tiny bit of dressage and work on collection. I tried in the field, but I just felt like I couldn't get as much sit. We did some shoulder in, haunches in, and leg yielding. And then we did some trot half pass and holy cow they were good!! They felt way better with true bend. But I'm sure they weren't as nice as they felt. But still, progress! We also played with some canter work. I did trot to canter and walk to canter and got one or two decent canter to walks but also some not so great canter to trot to walks. We did do the very shallow counter canter serpentine, although he swapped up front once tracking right. We also did a canter lengthen which he thought was fun. And then he threw in a massive trot extension, which was fun! I did get some good sit it felt like. But at the end, his tongue came out again. I think it was during the canter. But it went back in pretty quick and stayed in. Sigh... We finished with a nice leg yield and a nice trot.
We headed up to the jump arena because Laura and Kelly were there so we said hi and chatted a bit. Dan and Smarty tried to say hi and ended up squealing at each other. And man.. it was so tempting to jump him. But I didn't. I was a good girl. So then I was going to go back to the trailer but we were talking and Dan kept following them and then picked up the trot to be in front, so.. I hacked back out to XC. He kept breaking into the trot. Dude! It's been almost 2 hours... are you not tired?? Hee hee. We did manage to leave them and trot up the hill and trot over one log. Good pony!
He got a big hose off as he was sweaty. Me too!
Man... I love this horse though! We had so much fun today. And I'm so grateful to God for letting me have him still. I prayed to "Even just be able to hack him at Ashland comfortably... that would be enough"... And I got that. And not just hack him, but canter him! So thank you God for that! I'm sorry I'm being greedy and wanting more, but... he's so fun. But today... today was enough. Even without the dressage school.
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