Pony Love

Guess where we went this morning??

the Field

And guess what we did there?? Gallopin! So much fun :)

This is really our first 'official' gallop. I've been a little wary to allow Jetta to gallop under saddle because I don't want her thinking that whenever I want her to canter that she needs to or is allowed to gallop. Plus she's a thoroughbred and she's born to run!

So yesterday I talked to the BO and got the ok to use the field. We went and hacked around it, just making sure there weren't any gopher holes and getting an idea of how level the land was. Today was the fun part though :)

I let her trot out the first side of the square, then eased into a canter on the second side. From there I went into two point and gave her some rein and asked her to really go. Then along the third side we came back to a walk. She actually came back down really well! There was a moment though when her hoofbeats were echoing in the trees, almost sounding like something was chasing us and I thought she might really take off! We walked a bit and then I cantered some nice circles then did a simple lead change through the trot. Yes! No taking off or overreacting. That's my girl :) I made her do a pretty "dressage canter" for a ways then sat up in two-point and gave her a squeeze to go. She lengthened nicely but then all of a sudden, she totally hit this whole 'nother gear and we were flying!! Wow.

This time she wasn't very good about slowing down. When I sat back and asked her to woah, there was no reaction except for her leaning on my hands. She's still not a very balanced horse unfortunately... I made a large circle and she came right back down, but it was a tad scary there for a moment. My baby can run!

After that we walked the trails to cool off. She walked on the buckle the whole time. These are the times when I love my horse. She may be obnoxious, hyper, pig-headed, stubborn and willfull most of the time, but there's also those times when she tries her heart out for me and I love her for it. I hope those days will become more numerous as she gets older.

She's just been a spectacular horse all week. We had a good ride yesterday where I brought out the canter poles and she was doing them so perfectly. I've been really schooling that leg yeild and she's doing awesome, our canter is coming along nicely. Everything just feels so good. I have a jump school planned for tomorrow so I hope her good attitude will carry over into jumping!