Be Still My Heart

My horse Prisoner makes me feel like a little kid who can't wait to wake up in the morning (ok, so coffee also makes me feel this way, like seriously sometimes I go to bed excited for the cup of coffee I will have when I wake up, legal drug anyone?).  Sorry total tangent there.  Then there is my horse Diva who is so sweet and pretty and also wonderful.  Also, Bridger, still an a$$, but a loveable one who is really straight forward to ride.  And Mojito, he is still here with me and his singsong nicker makes me smile and cry all at the same time.

So lucky, so spoiled.  Even with the crappy parts of life, still forever grateful.

Had to laugh, typed that first paragraph and then was clicking around on the discover part of Spotify...and it found me this song.

Ok, enough mush, onto the pictures that all of us in blogland love!

Is this even real?

Yes we dressage too

Classic XC style jump, can't wait to try it out with him

Blue barrels like no big deal

I set up a fun course on Monday.

Beautiful sky

The top of the arena had a swedish oxer, the middle had two jumps that you could do across each diagonal, the bottom had a 4 stride bending line.  I set it up so you could ride a big figure eight, the idea being that no matter how a jump rode you could just ride positive to the next one.  Often when a horse misbehaves/gets excited it can be remedied by the rider giving them a job.  If you have a jump you can ride towards at any time it helps you give that horse a job and the 'excitement' will dissipate.


The photos are stills from this video.  I started out slow letting him tell me if he was too amped or not.  He was very chill so I kept adding in more elements until he had jumped them all.  Overall I was very pleased with him.  He is very honest about what he is doing, at one point towards the vertical he stuck his head in the air and tried to speed up, as I was about to pull him off the jump to reapproach he was like hey we have to get over that and while he knocked it down I was pleased that he wanted to do the jump.  It was definitely a learning session about distances for him, I try to stay out of his way with a supporting leg so he can figure it out.  There were some long, some short, and some just right, the best part is that he is all about the next thing, an awkward jump doesn't fluster him.