Superstar

I have my superstar pony back! Gosh I love this horse. If there was ever a horse that felt like "home" (besides Grady), Jazz would be it. I was so excited to ride her today, I missed my rock solid girl.

She's actually looking pretty good. I'm so happy with how she was cared for. She's relatively in shape (though has her hay belly going on as per her usual when she's not in heavy work or limited pasture) her feet look great, she just got her teeth done recently and is all around healthy. The only thing that I could see "wrong" is that she's got bumps on the front of her left knee and ankle. They're from scrapes that she got and the one on her ankle is slowly healing. When Jazz got her teeth done, I guess the vet took a look at them and said they were fine, just going to take a long time to heal since they're on the joint. They look a whole lot worse than they are. The knee scrape is all healed and just has a slight, soft bump. The ankle is just a small scab, doesn't look like there's a bump and it's just the scab pushing the hair up making it look like it does.

Anyways, onto our ride. I only have Colton's oversized bridle or a western bridle to ride in since everything else is moved up with Jetta, so instead I pulled out the double bridle. Probably not the best welcome home ride, but she's fun to ride in it and I wanted to push her a bit today to see what she needed to work on. Definitely a bit rusty, but that's to be expected after a year with someone who didn't expect her to work off her hind quarters instead of being heavy on the forehand.

My list of to-do things with Jazz are:

• Transitions. Boy, are they ugly. 
• Canter, needs more jump and impulsion
• Bending through the corners
• Straightness
• Needs steadier, softer connection

 Overall though it was an awesome ride. She didn't bat an eye at the double bridle, even though it took me forever to adjust it. We mostly rode on the snaffle but I picked up the curb a couple times in the canter and then rode with it the last 15 minutes of our ride. We did some lengthened trot and canter and for a QH, she can definitely move! Practiced my sitting trot, did some nearly perfect walk pirouettes and some great leg yields. The half pass was not there, but I didn't bother working on that since it will take a while. By the end she was remembering to bend through the corners, was on the bit for the most part and her canter had improved a ton but it will be a couple more rides until she's back 100% to her awesome self. I'm glad to have my baby back though I am wanting to find another lease situation. We'll just have to see.

On the 1st of October we could ride with TS. She'll be going to my neighbors to give lessons so either I could haul Jetta down or I could just drive down and ride Jazz, that way we could get a lesson in the double bridle so I actually might know what I'm doing with it (novel idea right?) So far I'm still trying to decide what to do... Thoughts?

The icing on the cake though is when I got off and went around the arena picking up various things and scooping poop and she followed me around or ground tied when I asked just like she always has, then I untacked her sans halter and she followed me to the gate and I let her back to the pasture. No halter and lead needed :) Such a lovely lady!

Missed this beautiful face!

Pretty girl