golden hour

Happy Friday, y'all! It's been a week around here, not gonna lie. At least from a horsey perspective, it wasn't the worst time to kinda take it easy tho.

golden child

Recall Doozy had that nasty kick / puncture wound on her forearm that was pretty swollen and ouchy for a few days. Then she got all her spring shots and was just kinda overall being a bit of a hot house flower. "My hair hurts!" vibes, if you know what I mean lol.

pics don't do the sky justice --- it was cream colored and glowing

But she's a resilient sort of mare, and the wounds are healing just fine. So we're back to just sorta plugging away at it!! Including a short fun ride up in the jump ring with friends last night!!

lolol why Yes! that IS a screen shot of a video taken of a video playing on my friend's phone

Like I mentioned in my last post, I'm trying to be a little more disciplined about refining some of the details and being more clear with the mare about how I want her to go... Ya know. Like, actually maybe training the animal haha. 

And she actually responded quite nicely in this ride by showing a willingness to adjust her balance and posture and overall longitudinal and lateral frame without getting riled up or tense.

but the colors are so pretty!! just pretend it's impressionism or something LOL

Ya know. When she wasn't otherwise trying to bolt directly at Rosette lol, to whom she is now obscenely more attached than she was pre-Hunt Club haha, womp womp. Oh well, tho, right? Like, learning that you have to focus, even when your friends are in the ring omg, is just one of those ongoing and difficult things for us that is pretty much unavoidable. 

Ya gotta deal with the complexity eventually, right? Might as well be on a nice spring evening while riding around with good barn buddies!

no i did not bother to dismount and reset fences lol, we had fun anyway!

Anyway, I wanted to pop over some fences but wasn't really sure how it would go --- on one hand, the mare was giving me kinda nice work!! Otoh, tho... ya know, the bolting lol. 

Plus the ring was kinda set up weirdly... Somebody had clearly been trying to force school their horse to trot fences, and had put lines of trot poles on the approach to most of the available single fences. 

blossoming trees!!!

But, eh, there was one nice single cross rail, plus a short two-stride in and out of microscopic Xs -- practically a cavaletti exercise. And I finally felt like I was getting the right balance out of the mare that we probably wouldn't crash and burn in the short distance.

not a bad way to spend a spring evening, amirite?

So we had a nice little be-bop around!! My first time popping through everything I tried to trot in... But I don't know. It just feels like it's not worth the fight -- not worth the backwards pulling when the mare most definitely wants to canter, and meanwhile seems to have a pretty naturally good eye and footwork.

get 'em, Dooz!!

We trotted into the 2-stride anyway tho the first time, just to get a feel for the distance. It rode in two trotting in, but kinda a long-ish two (given the small height), so I figured we'd probably be able to canter in and still get two without completely splatting lol. 

what a good girl <3

And ya know, Doozy just clocked right on around for our final little circuit (on video below). I tried to keep my favorite YR's pithy one-liners cycling through my head: "it doesn't look the way it feels" (aka lighten up) + "maybe under-think it" LOL, and Doozy responded in kind, maintaining a soft but positive balance that I could carry forward to the fences. 

quick video clip here

Honestly was super pleasant!! And just what the doctor ordered after a long week that felt like non-stop crunch time. 

sweet thing is too spoiled to stand still for pictures lol

We definitely need more lessons on the books but... not gonna lie, it's been nice to just putter around the last couple weeks after what was otherwise a gangbusters month for the little lady.

she looks good in pink, right?? 

I think she likes all the adventures and outings and whatnot, tho. She definitely came home from Hunt Club a much more grown up horse, and is basically straight up reliable now about riding around all the laneways on the farm to and from our various outdoor rings. 

Next challenge will be reintroducing riding out in the fields, tho I've been putting that off bc for some reason they never brought the rough board horses in for the winter. Usually they get confined to sacrifice paddocks and all the gates to the big xc fields get opened up -- making for easy open hacking. I haven't been super inclined to ride Doozy into a potential herd of loose horses haha, but eh presumably eventually the temptation of xc fences will win out!

That's all for the future, tho. For now, I'm just happy it's Friday. Anybody got any big plans for the weekend?