Pixie watches as Wyatt plays as she knows better than to get between Wy and his toys.
Wyatt Playing Roll It
Anything round works in this game. We came across this a bit down the street. It now resides on my porch for future sports activities.
Grain - Good to the last morsel
Here is a better picture of the matching jackets (Pix hates hers!)
I have so enjoyed my time off. I would really have no problem, other than money issues, with retiring. I rode New Year's Eve - just an easy bareback ride with very nice contract, relaxation and forwardness on Mare's part. I like to take the old year out and bring in the new riding. Due to staying up way too late I didn't ride until after 5 pm on New Year's day. It was awesome as we had the arena to ourselves once again. We practiced bits of a test, picking up the trot from halt and halting straight. Our downward transitions leave a lot to be desired.
I have been working a bit more on leg yield. We are very good going to the left but alas to the right we SUCK! I review by turn on the haunches, spiral in and spiral out on the circle. We start the leg yield at the walk and later at the trot. Before we are both too tired I make sure we have good results and then quit with a positive even if it is minor. Drilling is not a good thing. Mare gets a bit fussy as she likes to do things right.
I had signed up for trot poles at 12:30 on Sunday, little did I know at the time it would be -23 in the morning. I did some of my floor exercises to make sure I was supply. That was fine until I finished putting on multiple layers for survival. I looked like the little boy in "A Christmas Story" but I was warm.
Josie greeted me at the gate - thank goodness. My eyelashes were building icicles from the trek from the arena barn.
Heather set up a zig zag of trot poles. We warmed up by trotting straight down the center line over the middle of the zig zagged poles. Later she set them as tiny X's which we trotted through doing a circle to come back and take the next jump (the zag - LOL!). We did pretty well. I really need to concentrate on sitting up and not "jumping ahead" especially when we are only doing trot poles. I was pleasantly surprised when Josie took the last one as a jump. I went with her very well. The adrenaline was flowing and I was capable of jumping anything (hee, hee, hee). She settled back down to trotting through the poles. We then took the little X (zig) and turned a circle to take the next zag. Towards the end she set the last zag as a true X and we popped over very nicely. I feel my jaw drop with the feeling. It is like a ride that you are terrified of but love to do. A few thousand of these and it will be no big deal.
I have mentioned before green on green isn't good but I take such pleasure and satisfaction doing everything myself. I am knuckling down and taking some lessons so we can start to jump on our own. I need more mileage. I am going to pull out the 101 Jumping Exercises as there are so many things we can do to improve my base of support without even jumping. Team Johnson is getting ready for eventing - oh yeah!
Riding is Zen in 2010! Life is awesome!
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