Changing it Up

Sigh. It was a good idea at the time to take the horses home. It still is a good idea because I'm so short on money at the moment that it's nice to be able to set aside what I would normally pay for board. But... the whole riding situation is not ideal. My neighbor decided to close her arena for winter. Because it's too muddy. This is the problem with being at the mercy of someone else, but it's her arena and she can do what she wants! I'm just very bummed out :( I'm thinking about asking my other neighbor across the street if I can ride in his outdoor. That's where I used to ride when I was little, but I haven't been there in ages. It's probably overgrown with weeds or deep sand, but it might be better than riding in the pasture if he's ok with it. We shall see...

Super pretty sunset from yesterday evening

It's a little slick in the pasture, especially because nothing is 100% flat. Add in the fact that there's 16.2 hand of leggy Jetta on top of pancake feet and it's not a good idea to ride her outside in the mud. But for now, it's not too awful and it will do for a couple more weeks until it starts raining in earnest (it's only been intermittent the past couple weeks).

Surprisingly, our ride today was actually quite good. I only rode Jetta, despite wanting to ride both. Misty was a lunatic though. It was so funny, because she's NEVER hyper. She's quiet and sometimes a tiny bit lazy. But while I was warming Jetta up at the trot, she was leaping and galloping and bucking and rearing and spinning. It was hilarious. Jetta held it together despite Misty's antics. A few times she wanted to join in and I held her back, but she settled down quickly. Worked on getting a nice trot out of her on a slightly loopy rein. Really pushing her towards the bit, getting a longer stride and driving with the hind end. Some nice leg yields in there too. We cantered and she was very good to the left, we had a quick discussion about how to canter to the right - we are not going to go running around down the slight hill with our nose in the air! That would be a recipe for a fall, which I do not need! But she was really good overall.

For some reason, I thought it would be good to ask for some flying changes. Jetta doesn't do changes. She just won't do it, she'll happily canter along on the wrong lead or even cross canter without a care and gets pissed when I ask her to change. But, since working with Misty and fine tuning her flying changes, I've gotten better about asking for them clearly and being really conscious of both how to hold my body and how to affect the horse's body when asking for a change. And surprise, surprise we got a clean change, one in each direction! I was kind of stunned. It took two tries in each direction. She only changed in front on the first try, but second try was completely clean! Wow. What a good pony! It definitely made my night.

As a reward I let her do a little bit of a gallop up the hill where I like to run and can let the horses open up a little. Galloping a Thoroughbred has to be one of the most awesome things ever. Jetta just has such an insanely long stride and she LOVES to gallop, it's so easy to just let her open up. It's still one of my goals to get to gallop a TB on a racetrack, but for now I'll take my little gallops in the pasture and on the beach. Hopefully a beach trip will be happening over winter break in a few weeks!

Cooling out

Unfortunately my clipper blades weren't sharpened yet even though they were supposed to be done at the beginning of the week. Bummer. But I really, really need to give Jetta a clip so I'm going to buy a new set tomorrow (you really can never have too many blades) and Jetta will either get done tomorrow or Saturday. It's been quite chilly here so the girls both got their medium weight blankets on despite still having all their fur. It was 26 overnight! Too cold!

But the good news is that I took my Vespucci figure 8 in to get fixed. I bought it super cheap, it's quite used, but I love it. The only problem with Vespucci leather is that it's so soft that it stretches quite a bit and the throatlatch was horrendously stretched out. Like, I could probably fit another horse's head inside there with Jetta's, even on the last hole. So I took it in to get it shortened about 4" and it's perfect! I can finally use it in public and it looks quite good on Jetta's long schnoz.

She's too cute. And she got one of the last fall apples as her reward!