September 30, 2010

October 25, 2009
Now, while this wasn't a lesson, I'm PRETTY DARN PROUD of my baby! I have barely seen him, let alone ride him since our lesson last month, so he's been having a good vacation.

I wanted to take him and Rhythm down to the arena for a romp and then hop on him bareback for a bit. So that's exactly what I did. The two of them had some fun running around the arena, and I've just decided my horse runs funny because I get more goofy/ugly pictures of him running than I do good ones. But that's okay, he's still cute.

So after we got them all riled up, and then probably a bit tired out, I caught him and bridled him (he was great!). Mom boosted me up and like usual, he was totally cool with that. And we walked around a bit to get the feel of each other again - and you know, reinforce that I can be bareback and he still has to go where I tell him. Of course, he was really chill about that.

So, I decided to try trotting on him for the first time bareback. It wasn't so much him that I was worried about - it was more I was afraid I would go 'sit, sit, bounce, BOUNCE, splat'. But, oh my goodness my horse is so smooth!! I knew he was smooth, but man, he's really smooth. My butt hardly moved at all at the trot. Thankfully though, he was going pretty slow and didn't seem to want to go too fast (even though my boney butt was digging into his boney back).

We trotted one way, then stopped and trotted the other way a couple of times. Each time he got quicker on the transition as we both got more comfortable with it. So, after a break for cuteness (him, not me)...

I decided, what the heck, I'll canter! This is where I wasn't sure what he might do - if he got fast and I 'clamped' my legs on him to stay on, we could have some fun. Though I didn't expect him to do anything bad, other than possibly kicking his butt up a bit on the depart. Anyway, it went quite nicely - he broke smoothly and kept a nice slow canter for me - and well, you guessed it, he's got a smooth canter too!

I stopped, praised liberally, cheered that I didn't fall off, and then tried it the other way. Of course, this was his bad lead, and in the end I never got a right lead out of him even with multiple attempts. So, here's us going on the wrong lead.

But, I didn't want to get too insistent, because I definitely could come off if he got bratty about it, so I just decided to let it go this once, and go back to the left one last time. Holy moly, the last transition was PERFECT! We had a nice jog going, I asked, and he slid right into the canter. I was like, "OMG, I love you!", haha.

So, I love my horse. He's super, super awesome. I jokingly asked my Mom if I could keep him, because man, he's a keeper for sure! He's definitely the horse I've been waiting for.

But before that, I'll post some pictures over the last few months. I haven't been out on him since November (which was just a quick ride), so he's been having quite the winter vacation - it's over soon though as long as the weather cooperates!

First, a couple pictures of Nova's dam, Savannah (was called Pavane). I was very happy to meet her in person, and she's just gorgeous! Maybe one day we can get the two of them together for some pictures, I think it would be pretty neat.

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