Mini XC

We don't have much in the way of jumps/poles etc. at home but we make do with what he have.  Since I still had Pat's (amazing!) camera and the girls had been exercising the boys for me while I was gone I felt comfortable the boys were fit enough to do some makeshift XC schooling last night.  I have a few trees and PVC pipes to use as poles, a couple of barrels and I repurposed the compost "house" to make a coop jump.  The weather was fabulous and the boyfriend agreed to take pics for us.

Boo was good.  He had his usual cheeky, tantrum moments but no refusals or major bucking fits.  He's such a funny horse.  He's rarely a joy the whole time you're riding, but when he's good he's very fun to ride.  Not to blow my own horn (especially since it only took what, like 8 years?!) but he's really a pretty well trained horse.  He's decenlty adjustable and good to the aids, but damned if he doesn't make you work for every second of it.  He can be such a pain in the ass, but he's made me a lot better rider for it!

Reily was also great.  He had never seen a lot of this stuff before.  Barrels, the PVC poles, and skinny jumps were all new for him.  Pardon my disgusting equiation in some of these pics.  It's awful but sometimes he would jump so big he'd jump me out of the tack and other times I was pinching a lot with my knees and just got way ahead of him, subsequently crawling up his neck.  Sixteen days without riding and my eq went to sh*t  :'(  What matters most to me is making sure I don't catch him in the mouth so honestly as long as I'm not doing that I can live with myself while I get back in the swing.  Riding through some of his big leaps was hysterical, but looking through the pictures is even more hilarious!  He's such a good boy though, he'll really go anywhere you point him and it's great for him to do tons of stuff at this level.  I want him to learn where to take off while the jumps are little like this so that, later on, when we get to the bigger stuff and I get him to a fence funny he can save both of our butts.  So as funny as it is to see pictures like this one... where he took off WAAAYY long, I want him to learn that if that happens here's what he'll have to do to still safely get us to the other side.

It was a great night of riding :)