She's back

My awesome pony has made a reappearance! I lunged her on Tuesday to make sure she was sound, then yesterday actually rode.

I'm thinking more and more that she might have been/be in heat which is why her lumbar area is a little sore. Maybe she has a big ouchy follicle on her right ovary.

Anyways, she was really quiet coming in the pasture and I was tentatively hopeful she'd be a perfect pony again. Crosstied without issue (though there's only one crosstie currently because someone pulled the other one out of the wall... cough, Misty, so I just tied her lead rope to the other side).

We had the barn allll to ourselves

We had an AWESOME ride. I was over the moon. We've been working on developing a big, swingy walk since she tends to be tight in her back, especially in the walk and walk-to-trot transition. It's coming along quite nicely. Transitions were good, her lengthened trot is so much fun. I haven't videoed it, but it feels like she's really stretching and maybe even getting a little toe flick in there. I can't wait to ride it in the show next weekend. If anything, the only thing we need to fine tune in the lengthened trot is just getting it a little earlier. It takes her about a quarter of the way across the diagonal to really gear up for it, so we need to work on getting it a little earlier.

My mini warmblood

We worked on our 15 meter canter circles and she was doing really well, she was listening to me and being very adjustable while not getting offended at my suggestions to keep her on the smaller circle and staying on the bit the whole time. Even our 10 meter half circles at the trot were balanced for once in both directions.

The most exciting part though... we did a canter loop! I never thought she'd be able to do it because she's so hard-wired to do a flying change but she did two of them and for the most part, she was really relaxed about it. It made me wish we had signed up to do First Level test 3 because it looks like a really fun, technical test which I feel like doesn't usually show up until Second level. Gah, the more we train and the better she gets the more I want to keep her because she is just a tiny warmblood in a flashy paint body. And I think she could easily show at second level too.

We finished it off with a cherry on top - a balanced and STRAIGHT halt at x. This is the bane of our existence because while we seem to always do well at shows for the most part, we cannot school it correctly to save our lives. I was just super pleased with Misty. It was a really nice ride.

Not interested in taking cute pics with me

She got to graze a bit for her reward and then I lunged Miss Jetta. Jetta's looking really nice right now, albeit a tad chubby and I really need to start riding her again. I'm such a bad mom to her. She got some fancy new dressage boots from Smartpak so I had to test them out. I actually chose the right size since I had to send nearly everything else I got back because I got the wrong sizes... fail. Apparently I forgot that fly masks have to be Arab sized to fit my girls' delicate faces and my dressage girth is a 26" NOT a 28". So at least one thing fit. I may have to do a couple reviews though... I also got a pair of the new higher rise Piper breeches.

Big lazy stretchy trot

Oh! And congrats to L for reaching 1500 posts! She's running a contest so if you haven't heard about it, go enter (by the 9th)!

https://suenostomanvuelo.blogspot.com/2016/04/im-still-here-1500-post-zomg-giveaway.html