Wonderful Weather

The weather has been so nice lately! I can't get over it. Usually this time of year it's warming up, but it's still super rainy. Not so for this week! It has been sunny most of the time and warm, today it was in the upper 70's which in my book = perfect weather.

I've been cramming as much stuff as possible in my last few days of spring break. Sad to think that I go back to school on Monday.

The girls were both waiting for me!

I had a fairly good ride today, it was nice to pull out my light weight breeches and ride in a tank top. Love this weather. Both girls are shedding like crazy now that it's warm and light out. I rode Jetta first today and despite being silly spooky at some stuff she was really good. Both mares have been super hyper lately so the goal for the day was to tire them both out.

I'm still planning on trying out endurance this year with Jetta and doing a couple limited distance rides. I'd like to do one in May possibly, so I've been trying to figure out what stuff I need to do it and one of those things was a new or different saddle pad configuration. I've been looking at pads and oh my goodness. I really don't want to spend $200-300 on a saddle pad. I don't think I've ever spent over $50 for a pad. So, I sorted through my ridiculous number of pads and found my eventing shaped pad that I got last summer. Perfect! It's shaped so it's got a little less coverage than my dressage pad which will make it cooler, plus it's thin so it will breathe better and not soak up so much water/sweat like my other dressage pads would. It's a little small because it's made for a jumping saddle, but it will work. 

Looks much better on her now than it did last summer when she was so fat!

Jetta was being a dork and spooking on the lunge line at the reins flopping around on her neck. Every so often she would catch sight of one of them flapping around and she'd give a little leap away from it. At first I thought she was getting bit by something, but then I realized she was just being silly. Then when I got on, the BO brought in her daughter's Easter present - chicks. She put them in one of the recently vacated stalls and Jetta thought they sounded terrifying peeping away in that stall. She decided that that whole end of the arena was now off limits as there had to be some sort of monster lying in wait for her, making peeping noises.

But we still had a productive ride, I did a lot of lateral work both in the trot and a little bit in the canter to get her poor spooky brain occupied and work those muscles. By then end we actually (both of us) worked up a sweat so she got hosed off and put away.

Then Queenie. She's been really good lately, save for getting a little attached to other horses. She was in love with the BO's little yearling filly that got sold the other day which she is still upset about. She's settling back down but it's just midly annoying to have a horse that gets upset when her friends "leave" meaning that they're going from their stall to the arena, but hopefully she'll figure out soon that it's not the end of the world.

Our milestones of the day: cantering without bucking for the first time ever and opening a gate without me having to get down (though it did take us forever and was a little rough, but we did it).

With the cantering, she's learned my cue for it (kissing) so she goes into a little more easily. But she still gets really scared about it and right now it's more of a barely controlled hand gallop than anything. There's a little but of steering and we're getting the hang of it so we can now go about two laps around the arena, so there's improvement. The cool thing about her though is that she doesn't always pick up the correct lead, but when she doesn't she will automatically do a clean flying change to the correct lead. Cool!

My highlight of the ride - deciding to test out our "whoa" vocal cue when we were cantering and I was surprised that she instantly halted right when I asked. And it was a nice halt too, light and not heavy on the forehand so it was easy to sit. When I did the same thing in the other direction, she literally tucked her butt and slid a few inches. What did I say - reining draft horse here we come! The thought makes me giggle but seriously, once we get this canter under control she would be a fun horse to play around with reining on.

I was actually toying with the idea of taking her to a schooling show and doing some W/T western pleasure classes just to see how she'd do in a show environment plus she's doing great just poking around on a loose rein at a nice slow jog. It would be funny too to see what everyone thought of the draft horse doing western pleasure :)

No ride for the girls tomorrow, but Monday I'm planning on taking Queenie trail riding! So excited and I hope she behaves for it.