The good times keep rolling

 

A student made me a bird house in shop, 2 days after I hung it a family of blue birds moved in. 2 weeks after I hung it there are EGGS!!

It is ridiculously hot for this early in the year.  So hot that all of last week's moisture is completely out of the ground. In an effort to work on our heat tolerance we are still riding, but at a WAY reduced intensity and length.

I raised 3 fences in our mini-course at home to 2'3": two singles and the end jump of the bounces.

I warmed up quickly because we were both already pretty warm.  I will say that this was some of the best work he has done at home in terms of steadiness of tempo, contact, and softness.  He really only tested my hand once in the transition from free walk to medium walk.  After that he just motored around like a well schooled hunter pony - soft, forward seaking with his head and neck, and balanced.

I cantered one single jump to get a gage for where he was and it was simple, so we went through the bounces.  This is the first time we have just went at them without building them up over time at home and he tackled them great.  As soon as we turned the corner he locked on and I focused on my hands and supporting leg.

From there I went straight down our hill, making a very long roll back to jump the gray vertical pictured above.  Making long turns after the jumps forces me to think about everything. Last week he was so good because he jumped all the fences out of whatever distance we came to, this week his canter was SO much better that we met each jump softly out of stride.  

We went through building small courses of jump - long straight line - balanced turn - find your line - soft hands - jump.  We jumped everything - the verticals, my block jump (faux oxer), the xc mini table, the barrels, all but one XC jump I have to replace a rail on - and everything just came right out of stride. 

I only jumped for 10 minutes before I called it a day and went and hacked out for the rest of the time.

SO GOOD!

I feel a bit dumb having entered GAG and not Maiden this month, but seeing as our last XC school was a shit show, I would rather be totally underwhelmed and find it all very easy.  We will move up in July.