Ashland

Today was farrier day so I had plans to get them done and then go play at Ashland. Except... everyone was missing at least one shoe and as soon as we started on Lyric, Patricks grinder broke. So, because we were able to replace Funny's shoes.. even though she has pads too... (actually, now I'm not really sure why we had to use the grinder on the other two but not her, but regardless)... but whatever... we were able to do Funny and then Patrick told me to go ride and he would fix things and come back this afternoon. So.. instead of riding Dan with Sharon, I rode Funny with Sharon.

 

But since I could get there early, I did some arena work first. They were setting up the jumps in the hilltop arena for the show so Funny was a little feral and distracted. We walked up to the jump arena first to say hi to Caroline and show her they weren't scary. And Oliver was there, Carolines toddler. He wanted to pet Funny. And Funny was good and brave. We even gave him another dragonfly. (He had liked my bridle dragonflies so I had given him a broken one). 

 

Anyways, she eventually settled in the arena and we got some decent work. I was playing with shallow counter canter loops. We held it most of the time but once we got a clean change. Whoops. I didn't ask for it though. Or at least I didn't mean to ask for it. I probably did. But her canter in general felt better! I sat the trot into it which helped. We also played with baby trot half passes. And did some working trot to lengthen to working trot and even got one really decent one. There was a few steps of funky today. Like maybe 6 steps total and it was when she was very distracted and concerned about the jump arena. I never felt it other than those few steps and couldn't recreate it. So.. I guess it was rein lameness/balance issues. We were just about done with our ride and I was trying to get a nice trot to end on, but then Sharon walked up with Baylor and Funny got silly, so we had to do a few more minutes until she settled. 

 

And then we went for a nice hack. We did a tiny bit of trotting too. It was lovely and the bugs weren't too bad.