Good Pony is Good

 On Friday my Farrier was out to trim Uno and the donks.  I had planned on hopping on when she was done and she stuck around to watch Uno.  I just hoped on bareback in a halter and showed him off a bit.  When she commented that it has been 6 months since she rode, we threw a saddle on Uno, drafted Dutch into work and went for a little hack.

As expected Uno was prefect and Dutch was convinced this was the dumbest shit ever.  Then on Sunday I went for my usual lesson, we kept it short because I have another upper respiratory something that I caught from my students. However, we had another Aha moment.  If I do my job and ride to the cut off point, I now have enough time to grab my neck strap and really encourage him to poke his nose out and take responsibility for the jump.  We did very simple grids that were basically a 3 fence course with take off and landing poles.  The first time through when I "let go" he just kind of stayed in self carriage without looking around and flubbed his way through.  After that each time I "let go" and kind of pointed at the jump I felt him clearly look, pause, think about his feet and NAIL the pole and take off.

Being the best boy ever.

After a bit he started getting pretty tired, the level of canter we get now is so uphill and balanced that he gets really pissy when it falls apart.  At the same time he does not have the strength to hold it together for long.  As usual he started get a bit tense on the right lead and began kicking out.  So we switched to the left, jumped the baby Swedish oxer and called it a day.

He is such a cute little pony.

I then climbed into bed and stayed there all weekend.