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Well, I sent Jazz off to her new home on Friday. Definitely bittersweet :'(

Last bridleless ride

The weather has been awful of late with thunderstorms on Thursday and Friday (love me a good thunderstorm when I'm snuggled up in bed though!). I had been planning on going on a trail ride with Jetta when I dropped Jazz off at her new home because their barn is right across the street from my absolutely favorite horse park. But with the weather I wasn't too sure this would happen...

I texted TH (Jazz's new owner, mom of the girl who is going to ride Jazz) and she said that she thought the weather would be fine and that they had a group going trail riding if I wanted to join.

We met at the horse park and I unloaded the horses and immediately Jazz's new girl, AH, came over and started grooming her. At least she will always be perfectly clean! Hah, Jazz is the ultimate "tom boy" though and prefers being dirty. They tried on a couple saddles and had one that fit quite well with the help of a fleece pad.

While Jazz was getting all fitted out in new tack, Jetta was being a pill. Since I hadn't ridden her in a while I decided to put her front boots on her hooves just in case she was sensitive on the crushed gravel there. It's a pretty easy footing, but I didn't want her to be sore her first ride back. She was being AWFUL. She tried to lay down while I had one foot up. This was one of her favorite tricks when I first got her - besides trying to kick your face in - and it's luckily gone away until now. Bad, bad pony.

Jazz and her favorite treats. I gave her half the bag before she left and sent the rest with her.

Finally, all horses were tacked up and AH got on Jazz and rode her around the round pen there. Jazz was being good besides trying to pause next to Jetta. In fact, Jazz had the most perfect behavior the whole entire trail ride - she didn't spook at anything, she didn't look at anything, she went where she was told, rode third in line on a loose rein the whole time. Her only "bad" thing was trotting up the little hills, which the other horses did too. 

I think we rode for about an hour or hour and a half. It was nice going with this group because they know the park really, really well so I got to see a side of it I hadn't seen before and I can't wait to go back and explore the area a little more.

Jetta was awful. But I didn't expect her not to be. After all, we had to walk the whole time. It was her first ride back. I didn't know where we were going so she wasn't allowed to be first in line. The horse that was leading walked super slow, basically three strides for every one of Jetta's "normal" strides so I had to ask her to walk slower. So we worked on slowing down, giving to the bit, responding to half halts, etc.

Getting a bath before heading down to her new home.

When we got back to the parking lot I loaded up all of Jazz's things in their truck and then Jazz hopped into their trailer without a second thought. I'm going to miss her so much, she is such an amazing horse so I just hope they appreciate her as much as I do. I'm sure she'll be spoiled by AH and they said that they'd keep in touch and give me updates so I can't wait to hear how they're doing and maybe next summer I'll get to watch them at 4-H fair.