boring is good

I had just about talked myself out of riding last night.... Eh, I was tired, it's been rainy gross weather, so many zoom calls already this week, so tired... ya know. Normal stuff. 

Was just gonna brush the ponies, tell them they're pretty, change Charlie's wrap, and call it a day. 

Buuuuuut.... Then Katie said she wanted to play around with some little jumps in the indoor lol.

me when my friends say they wanna set up little jompies

That obviously sounded a whole lot more exciting than yet another ride spent on endless walk-trot transitions and spiraling in and out, our homework from last week's dressage clinic. 

doozy loves the mirrors lol

Don't get me wrong, I love homework. The day in, day out nitty gritty minutiae is all part of the journey and joy for me and all that... But, eh, sometimes it's nice to change it up haha!

power trotting around

Tho, naturally, we spent our warm up on the same work anyway. Bc ya know, Lauren maybe had a point about the importance of zillions of walk trot transitions, esp any time I feel like Doozy might be trotting a bit away with me. 

traffic school graduate

And I'm enjoying practicing the spirals too, bc it turns out that our blobular attempts in the clinic weren't only bc of imprecise steering. It's actually..... not that easy to keep Doozy turning on those smaller radius circles right now. Which like, duh haha. That's kinda the whole point. Needs intentional practice, so we practice intentionally!

target acquired!

But ya know, the main event was playing with colorful poles, yay!!! We set up three jumps along the E-B line, a simple straight forward X on the quarter line, and then two verticals on the diagonals.  

wheeeeeeee!

Plus we placed a few single ground poles strategically --- one in line with the center line at A, the end of the arena where Doozy tends to fall in on her right shoulder the most. Another in line with the center line right around X, for catching on a circle. And another on the quarter line at B. 

landed on her correct lead!

I obviously love a lot of ground pole exercises --- they are so helpful in keeping me honest in my steering and balance and all that. Plus they're useful in helping Doozy tune in too.

 

my left hand has a mind of its own lol but look at her go!

After a long walk warm up, and some pleasant trotting plus some solid canter reps over the poles, we started aiming for the little cross rail. Obviously clobbered the whole thing the first time bc #boooring lol. 

get 'em, dooz!

Dismounted to reset it, got back on, then went about jumping it back and forth a few times in each direction. And Doozy was basically just perfect. Kinda bored, tho got excited and cantered the last few steps to it once or twice. 

clever already with her footwork

So I opted to do one last little circuit around, but this time adding in one of the little verticals! Doozy has jumped a slightly larger vertical before --- when we did that two stride in and out a few weeks ago. But ya know. It still feels new to me. 

adorably boring

Not to Doozy, tho, apparently! This jump was equally boring to her, and she just trotted right on over and cantered away. Good girl! And obvi we videoed it bc I live for this stuff lol.

landed that lead correctly too, good girl!

Also notable about the ride --- we started in the ring with just the two mares, then Punky joined us as we were starting to jump. And then right as Doozy headed to her first jump in the video below, you can hear the sliding door as a fourth horse came in from the attached barn. 

And none of that mattered to Doozy. She is officially traffic-safe in our home indoor, good girl!

link to quick video

And that's the stuff, right? Good clean simple fun with our ponies -- I'm so glad my friend convinced me to ride haha. And am excited to keep working on the jumping stuff with Doozy --- she definitely seems to enjoy it!