I GOT TO JUMP MISS!!!!

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Ok, as you can probably tell, I had a great ride on Miss this weekend.  I got out to the barn a little late Saturday morning.  The kids were already there and get Kaye and Fanny tacked up to ride.  Astrid took Kaye out for a lesson and Victoria was on Fanny, so I figured I would tack up Miss and take her out to walk with them.  For the past few months, as I've been tack walking Miss, I've been tacking her up in the dressage saddle.  Saturday was no exception.  By the time I finished tacking up and getting myself dressed, Astrid and Victoria were almost done with their lesson.  But I hopped on and started walking Miss around.  The kids all switched horses, Carlee got on Kaye, and Henry got on Fanny.  I continued walking Miss and asked Bonnie to set up some ground poles for us to step over.  So we did that a few times.  And then Miss heard something that was apparently very scary and she decided to spook.  Which of course for Miss is just sort of humping her back and bouncing in place, and she thinks she's bucking.  And I just laughed.  So I got her settled down, and walking again.  Bonnie has the kids start trotting and tells them to go ahead and trot through the ground poles.  And Miss spooks again. At that point Bonnie just told me to put her in a trot and let her work off some of that energy.  Now I haven't really trotted Miss much in the past.  She would trot like 2 circles and get very wheezy with her breathing.  But I figured if she got too bad we would just go back to the walk.  So we trotted around a bit, through the ground poles.  And then after a while Bonnie set up a baby cross-bar and told the kids to go through.  I just kept trotting Miss on the rail and Bonnie told me to take her through too, see what she does.  First time she was sort of just figuring it out, it has been about a year since she jumped anything.  Next time through, she just attacked the fence, power trotted through the poles and then really over jumped the fence.  Normally, a baby jump like that she just steps over, she has to get up to 3 1/2 -4 feet before she really starts to use herself.  Well she was using herself over this little fence.  I could really feel her snapping her shoulders and back over it.  The whole time her ears were perked and she was eager to jump.  She loved it.  And I was just laughing pretty much the whole time, I was so happy she was jumping.  We jumped that about a dozen times or so before calling it a day.  And Miss wasn't breathing hard at all.  I'm amazed.

Needless to say, Miss got lots of treats after we headed back into the barn.  And she got a good grooming and her tail put up in her snazzy new tail bag.  Sheet back on and she was tucked into her freshly cleaned stall with another can of grain.  Of course by the time I left the barn she was sacked out in her stall.

Other than riding Miss, I didn't get much else done at the barn, cleaned some stalls and helped the kids a bit.  But with having to work at 5:00 I didn't have much time.  Looking forward to having the 11th off, so I can spend all day in the barn while the kids are at school.

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