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Friday, May 22, 2015

No drama, no problem!

This week passed pretty uneventfully in all aspects of life, including the horsey life.

Max was a doll on both Tuesday and Thursday evenings. We mainly worked on pole-work and he willingly and (hopefully) happily picked up his feet nicely over them. We've also been practicing switching leads. Something I haven't learned how to do yet, but since he does them automatically I have been changing directions at the canter to see how it feels. Sometimes I don't even know it's happened..other times he doesn't switch at all and goes around at a counter-canter. I've spoken to my trainer about learning the cues for it so hopefully we'll cover it the next lesson.

This was also the first week he was let out in the big field. Thankfully he behaved very nicely and was not difficult to catch. Whew!

Short post today, nothing much to report. We'll be taking a quadrille lesson tomorrow, and I'll be going to hang out with my friend's lovely paint horse while she's away on vacation. It's going to be a fun weekend! Happy Memorial Day!




Saturday, May 16, 2015

Our First Hunter Pace!

And we survived it!! Woohoo!!

It was a wonderful experience, and an absolutely gorgeous ride through the  Fairfield County countryside.

I also discovered something new about Max - He is terrified of water crossings! The first stream we came across that had running water in it nearly blew his mind. He spun and tried to run away and he was shaking like a leaf!

After that he decided he was going to jump out of every single water crossing. The first one he lept up so high he bashed me in the face with his neck. And the very last one he pretty much jumped straight out of a four foot ditch instead of walking out of it like every other sane horse. One of the ladies we were riding with turned around and asked if he had some Arabian in him because he was hot hot hot!

Anyway, that last one de-seated me and I slowly slid off and landed on one leg. I was mostly embarrassed, but I know I'll be feeling that one tomorrow morning.

All in all, a great learning experience...and with one under our belt whose to say there won't be another coming soon!

Here are pictures and a video for your enjoyment ^.^









Scary monster below, me jump high!