Ridable!!!!

 Today was FUN!!

We had a grid lesson today with Julia and Margaret. I got there a little early and Funny and I did a warm up hack to the lake, through raccoon loop, and then up through XC. We walked over the baby ditch but of course she acted like it was scary and tried to refuse it for 10 seconds first. Silly! She was jumpy today too! The squirrels in the woods kept scaring her and making her jump. Sassy! I told her jokingly that she was so spry and fit that we should probably do the BN3D and I bet we'd win best conditioned too! Just like big Brother. And then... I thought... you know... that's not a bad goal for this year!! Then we trotted up the hill to the stadium arena. We chatted briefly with Jacel and then Julia showed up. And then Margaret walked up, walking Elliott in hand. We could just barely see the tops of their heads over the plants so Funny got all spooky and was staring! But she realized what it was once we could see them. Margaret got on and they came in to join us and Funny was pissed. Ha ha. She pinned her ears at him hard core! And then she was just mad and made mare faces at Player too. Hee hee. Sorry Funny! You've got to share the arena!

We warmed up at the trot only but we practiced our homework and I pretended to have a polo wrap. She was pretty darn good. She was super spooky at the end of the arena but when she wasn't there we got some nice trot. So then we started the grids! It was the same cross rail, bounce, vertical, bounce, crossrail grid. Jacel added trot poles coming into it. So we started through and Funny was pretty good. We had to figure out the ridability. I couldn't just be a passenger and let her take over, but I also didn't want to piss her off. After two or three passes we figured it out. I could half halt, and a hair more aggressively as we hit the trot poles and she was actually listening! It helped that I used my core before we came down the line and anchored my seat bones. She was quite polite today actually with all of it! So then Jacel started building it up and we just kept going through it. She was really quite good! We practiced landing on a straight line too. She did drift slightly left at the end of the grid. 

After we did that a few times, Jacel got a look on her face and told us this was going to be fun! And, it actually was! We did the grid then turned left and came back to the rail and then did a roll back tight turn to the gate.. then another roll back to the other gate. It was a left turn, right turn. And it was rather tight turns for the baby horse. And the second gate was an oxer and slightly bigger, but Jacel told me it was fine. Funny wouldn't even notice. And she didn't. In fact, she got better as the jumps got bigger because she actually had to rock back and jump. So Julia did it and it went pretty well. Then it was our turn. And Funny just clocked through and nailed it! Granted, we trotted through the first roll back because she kept throwing her left shoulder in because she was looking at Kelli and Marvin down in the dressage arena. But we cantered the second roll back. And she was perfect! She even bent around my inside leg and I could ride the outside aids! GOOD PONY!!!!!

So then we did it again and then Jacel set the grid up even higher. She told me I could come through it again with it that height, or she would lower it if I wanted her to. I asked what she thought and she said to do it. She said we could always knock it back down, but she really thought Funny wouldn't care. And she didn't! She clocked through it again and just picked up her pretty little toes! 

Oh she is getting to be SO MUCH FUN!!! And so much more rideable! See Funny... I told you that if you let me have a little bit of a say, we would do FUN THINGS!!! Good pony! So yeah.. maybe BN3D in the Fall!!!