Knee High

Someone's been enjoying some knee-high grass.

Sunny Sundays

I took the opportunity today to ride with Natalie. We did the same as last time - quick school then headed up to the back. This time we walked around the racetrack with a small trot near the end, then headed over to the dam for a play.

Natalie rode the two of them through the dam. I took some video. First up is Gracie - note how cranky she is about the water splashing her in the face on her second go around.



Be warned, I swear at Gracie in the beginning of this video. She was rubbing her head on me.


Allie rolled in the mud AGAIN with me! I thought I had her, we were walking forward but nuh. She has finally discovered the joy of rolling in the mud and I couldn't stop her. And I spent an hour and a half cleaning my saddle before the ride too. Witch.

It was an awesome ride. The weather was stunning and warm, the ponies were happy (if a touch spooky) and we had fun.

Can't ask for more than that on a Sunday.

Concentrating on her tootsies.

She's looking FIIIINE

These are video stills, obviously.

Zoomy pony

Saddle Fit, Lesson, Happy Ponies.

We had Tony Flynn come do a saddle fitting for both Allie and Gracie yesterday. I bought my saddle from him over a year ago, but I could tell that my saddle wasn't balanced for me (it was fine for Allie). Sure enough, it was tilting me forward and needed a heap of flocking up front. It felt great in my lesson!

Gracie's dressage saddle is no good. It doesn't have a changable gullet so it is now for sale for about $50 if anyone wants it? Natalie's other saddle, a wintec all purpose, DOES have a changeable gullet so he fitted that to her and she went so.much.better. under saddle with it - Nat said it was her best ride on her - ever. He put an extra wide gullet in it! No wonder the poor mare didn't have much forward or want to lift her back before.

We got some photos and video:

Nat was trying to get up off her back here I think - looks like it worked!

Watch this one, it has a lol moment!

Happy pony and rider after the cool down walk up the street.

Our neighbor's cute dog who came for a walk too. LOVE those ears!

I also got a lesson with Ann before Nat rode Gracie - pics and vid of this too! We concentrated on her being 'through' to help with our walk-trot transitions (which are normally 'leaping' - Ann said "we will fix that today!" and so we did!) and then have a little go with the same principles at the trot-canter transition.

Finally - a nice trot-canter transition. Just what I was looking for!

 

I was so satisfied with the lesson - Ann said that with a horse at this stage normally they look for nice moments - Allie rather has bad moments among the nice, if that makes sense? She also said once Allie has the balance and strength, her trot is going to be amazing. I'm so excited. :D

So motivated and excited for my test now!!

Out and About!

We finally borrowed a float for a few days and got the girls out!

Yay!

They don't look too worried... yet.

Here Allie is putting 2 and 2 together. "The last time I was in a white box I moved house!"

"Is this our new house?"

We took them back to our old agistment for trail rides, and we took them to a local indoor for some schooling (which was more get-the-pony's-attention than schooling-for-correctness). They were so well behaved! Loaded well, traveled pretty well (except when some arse ran up our bum while we were going slowly around a corner and beep-beep-BEEEEEEEPPPed his horn at us. Gracie FREAKED!) and behaved under saddle. We are so proud of the girls!

See the lip-stick mark on her nose?

Does this horse look worried about her first ever visit to an indoor? Nope!

She has a bit of a trot on her, I can tell you!

Very happy trail-riding ponies!

We thought they would be scared of the crane and junk, but no, they were fine.

Allie was pretty funny - she kept giving the hairy eyeball to piles of rubbish, like she was disgusted  by them and couldn't stand the thought of rubbish touching her. We also tried to have a canter up our old galloping hill, but they didn't know what to do! We tried so hard to get them to go forward but in the end we were kicking them like they were fat naughty school ponies and all they would do was walk! They had no idea what to do with all that space in front of them! We were in hysterics, laughing and not believing it! We are so used to holding our horses back at that hill, then having a leaping start and holding on for dear life so it was weird for us as well. Next time we will go out with an older experienced horse who can teach them the joys of a flog up the hill!

Here is a little video of Allie not caring at all about being ridden in a strange new place with a bunch of strange horses looking at her:

Very very happy with the girls. :)