The Whole Package! (minus the tail)

Oh Thank you God for this bonus! And thank you Funnybuns!! You were delightful today!!

 

I had a last minute cancellation so I was able to sleep in a tiny bit today and then take Funny to Ashland for a ride. Whoo hoo!! It was a beautiful day too. Well, the sun did come out and it was warm. And my tea olives are blooming and smell so good. But it's Janury!!! What??? 

Anyways. Funny and I had a nice hack to warm up. We walked to the lake, then down raccoon loop, crossed the bridge and up idlewhile. Or sideways... It might have been sideways. Then we headed to the arena for some dressage. And she was soooooo good! And soooooo fun! We did our homework and while we didn't focus as much on the super small trot, we did get a decent working trot for a good chunk of the ride. And we played with some fun things. We did some lengthens and back to working trot. We did some nice leg yields. We even did some half pass at the walk and shoulder in at the walk. Then we did a long side of shoulder in at the trot. We did some 10 meter circles. Then we got the super fancy trot and did our canter transitions from there. And the canter was better. She still wants to tip her head tracking left. And she still is slinging me to the outside, but stepping in my outside stirrup seems to help us both balance. We played in the canter too... some shallow serpentines, some 15 meter circles and even some 12 meter circles. We played with lengthen and back to working. She was trying hard! And then we did some walk work... free walk to medium walk and worked hard to keep our medium walk from getting lateral. It's getting better. We also did stretchy trot. And then we did our nice "collected" trot again after the canters. And she's getting so much better at it and quicker. We also did some canter trot canter transitions and she's getting better and coming back to a working trot after the canter. 

 

She was sooooo good. We had fun! And it's amazing and super cool how much and easily I can influence her with my seat. If I just tuck my bum and lift my core and shift my balance back, she rocks back on her haunches and balances herself and that almost automatically slows her tempo too. We also played with lifting my seat and thus lifting her back into the saddle at the canter. It's definitely still harder at the canter, but that will get there too.

 

We finished with a nice leg yield each way to a nice halt. Super good pony!! Then we took a cool down hack around pterydactyl lake. She was sweaty enough to hose off. On JANUARY 9th!! Craziness. I didn't even have to put any clothes on her to haul home after hosing her off. Of course tonight the rains come in and then it's going to rain all night and day and then the temps will drop from 71 to a windchill of 36. Sigh... 

 

Anyways... she's getting so exciting!! Like... today I sort of thought we might be able to do a first level test sometime this Spring. For fun. We still aren't consistent and she's still not technically "on the bit" but that's getting so much better the less I'm worrying about it.