Today turned out to be a beautiful day! Around 5 am this morning we had tornado warnings and the storm that whipped through was intense! It sounded like the rain was swirling around the house! Luckily we didn't have any damage other than a lot of wet. The ponies all survived and seemed unfazed. The wind picked up and the clouds were moving fast and the sun came out. It was warm... until the wind blew!
So... Mike and I slept in... then I caught up on dishes and laundry and then hooked up my new trailer camera. Then Mike and I took the Superduke to lunch. It wasn't too cold with proper gear. Just like riding horses!
When we got home I grabbed Funny and we headed to Ashland. The rings had just opened up so we were able to do our dressage in the dressage arena instead of the jump arena. yay! My new trailer camera is fantastic! Funny just looks around and goes under the chest bar and back up and back under and back up. No snacking. But now I can see if she really is "beating up the gray horse" next time we haul with Smarty!
We rode in the rings first because Judy had booked them at 3 and I was running out of time, although I'm sure she would have shared or I could have gone to the lower dressage arena. But we managed to get in a whole hour before they got there so it worked out fine. We started out with our walk work and even played with shoulder in, haunches in, turn on the forehand and haunches and leg yield. She was super. (Not so much at the trot.. that's way harder). We then went into the trot and she was lovely! Slower tempo-ed and even a little lofty dare I say!? She was going quite nicely with a nice bend, forward and straight, and almost even reaching for the contact. Like... amazingly well!!! Then we did a little canter and it got a little spicy. Ha ha. Always. So today I tried to do a lot more canter. I thought that maybe if we did a lot of trot and a lot of canter and more trot and more canter and more trot and more canter.. .she'd eventually realize that cantering doesn't mean it's time to get spicy! So.. I tried it. And... it didn't really help. We got some nice work but nothing like what we had in the beginning. And there was a bit of spice and naughty. She started fishtailing and getting humpy behind. Which... almost makes me wonder if she's not so happy with the dressage saddle anymore. I should probably stop riding in it until I can have it fitted again. We did play with leg yield into the canter and that helped. And then we played with trot to walk to trot to walk to trot transitions as she started to get super sassy and inverted and bolty in the transitions. We even got a nice walk to canter on the right lead. Not so much on the left because we couldn't get a good walk to trot first. I did manage to get some nice work and we called it while we could.
Then we went to take a short hack to the lake and back. As we hit the cross country field Devon was cantering up from the lake. She pulled up, but Funny didn't mind. I mentioned that it looked like so much fun I was tempted to do it too. Her and Blaze went to the arena's so... I let Funny have a canter. And then it turned into a gallop up the hill! And then she let out a big buck! Wheee. But kept going so it was fine. It did take me from almost the top of the hill to the cut through to the dressage arena's to get her stopped though. ha ha. Whooops. Maybe not the wisest of choices. So then after she settled a tiny bit I did make her trot somewhat politely for a bit. Then we hacked to the lake and then headed back home. It was a gorgeous day despite the wind.
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