Today was fun! We headed to Ashland and did some arena work with Kelli and Marvin. And Funny was in full on dragon mode! We walked into the arena and she got to the first corner, dropped her barrel about 4 feet and then scooted. At nothing! Then carried on. We did our walk warm up and then picked up the trot and she was ticking.... ticking... ticking! She never did explode but she was on the muscle! However, despite that we had a fairly decent ride. She was quick but had a better tempo and more consistency than she had a few weeks ago. She also responded to my half-halts and downward transition aids most of the times. There was a time or two when I really had to half halt that outside rein and shut it down because she was just going. And she was a lot more flingy today... flinging body parts every which way. And she even flung a hind foot out at Marvin as we got a little too close to him because she threw her shoulder out so hard. I had to ride hard today... but, she had plenty of moments that I could give the reins and soften and she reached forward. Plenty of moments of nicely balanced trot and canter where she was carrying herself. And like I said.. plenty of good responses to my half-halts. And we did a fair amount of canter transitions. I'm definitely feeling when I can ask for the left lead and successfully get it. She gets so twisted and leans that I know it won't happen. But if I can get her balanced, then we can nail it. We did lots of canter to trot to canter transitions and also lots of almost trot to walk transitions and a few almost trot from canter transitions. It helped a lot and she even gave me some nice trot work after the canters. Granted, she was still a fire breathing dragon. We finished up with a few good halts too! I didn't insist she hold them forever, but she stopped mostly square, stayed still, and took a breath and then I praised her and moved her out of it. No sense in being ridiculous and insisting she hold it for longer than necessary when she's being really good about it.
We then went to go for a trail ride but Marvin kept stopping and was so slow. Funny used it as on apportunity to snack but it was frustrating because... let's either hack.. or snack. So since Marvin was taking forever, I popped Funny over the green baby staircase jump and then did a little canter circle. Kelli told me to go play and that it would be good for Marvin. So.. we did. I let her pop over about 12 fences and we just cantered around picking off fences that looked fun. I was so tempted to take her over the faux trakenher but I didn't. She probably would have popped right over it. I did take her over the BN (maybe novice) cabin and she left out a stride twice! Ha ha. The first time was more dramatic. The second time, maybe there wasn't room for another stride but she definitely left a little long. But she literally jumped everything I pointed her at. She even trotted straight into the water and over the log out. Good girl! It was fun. We both needed that after dressage boot camp. ;)
Then we talked briefly to Kelli and she decided to bail so I headed off so that I could get home and ride Dan. And then Marvin wanted to follow us. So, we waited on her to catch up and then we hacked Raccoon loop and up to the lake. I let Funny in to have a sip of water and she started to buckle so I kicked her out. No ma'am! I've still got my saddle on! So then we walked around the lake and back home. It was a shorter trail ride that I would have liked but she had worked hard and we had been on a long time and I wanted to ride Dan too. And hopefully we'll get back out here this week too.
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