Such a successful day:D

So let's see...

Today I jumped both Bella and Patrick, and both of them were stellar! Bella was actually much better than I thought, considering I didn't lower the fences, so she warmed up over 3'0" and 3'3". Awesome:D I've decided we're doing the jumpers this weekend. Screw equitation! I'm done with that political nonsense (unless of course one of the shows doesn't have jumpers, which happens frequently. Then I guess I have no options). However, I'm only putting her in the 3'0" instead of our usual 3'6". The footing there is terrible, and the course designs always look like they came out of the imagination of a chimpanzee. No need to get cocky on my part!

I set up another little ground pole grid off the right lead for Patrick today. When I jumped him last weekend, it was all off the left lead because I didn't have enough poles for another line. However, I moved some stuff around this morning and made up another line for him. I left everything at his finishing 2'0" height, one line had a little oxer, the other had a vertical. The new line had the poles set at 3m instead of 2.80m, but I left the one stride to the jump at 6m. This forced him to open his stride a little bit coming into the jump, but encouraged him to rock back a little since it put him in a little closer than the other line. It was a little confusing for him at first. He opened his stride right up when I asked him to, but it took one kind of messy attempt before he figured out how to respond to my lifting half halt in front of the jump. Then it went great! We did each lead 4 or 5 times, and he's so fun to jump! It's this nice, smooth little glide over the fences:D Hooray Patty!

Bailey finally had no hives today! They started going down yesterday afternoon (of course, right after I called the vet) so I didn't give her the medicine, hoping they were going away on their own. And they did! So today I threw her in a chambon and surcingle and lunged her for about 10 minutes. Hopefully tomorrow the hive situation stays static and I can ride her again. I'm thinking some trot poles to play with?

Once all of that was said and done, Dad hooked up his truck to the trailer and I loaded up Scooter, my rock solid champion worth his weight in gold, through Patrick in next to him and closed the trailer up. Now, this was the first time Patrick had been closed in there since I bought him almost 4 years ago. He handled like a true rockstar, and we proceeded to drive him and Scoots around for about 15 minutes before returning home. He continued to wait patiently while we opened the trailer, and stood like an angel until I slowly backed him out. At one point, he put a hind foot off the ramp, wiggled it around in the air for a minute, then calmly relocated it back on the ramp, straightened out, and continued on his way. What a gentleman! I'm so glad he handled himself, and I can't wait to see how he does in schooling tomorrow morning! Hopefully someone notices him, but I'm not getting my hopes up. Not many people go to the schooling at these things. Oh well. I'm actually starting to think it might be worth the money to take him to Culpeper this summer and do the little lvl 0 and 1 jumper classes, just to get him some more exposure. He's just so damn cute!

Now, for my opinion of the day, I'm really starting to dislike Dover Saddlery. I guess they're okay for little things if you have a store location nearby, but these days I'm ordering everything from SmartPak. Their shipping is cheaper, their generic brands are cheaper and they have a wider variety of them, and even their catalogs are nicer to flip through. Just my little soapbox:D Plus, they have Antares...*drool.

So here's my weird picture of the day. Anybody know what could make a black pony's buttcheek bleach out randomly?