Yesterday

I missed out on my update yesterday! Chuck's 2 boys, Ethan and Nathan, were both in town with their girlfriends and came over for dinner. So I ran to the store from the barn and picked up enough food to feed a small army and spent my evening cooking and baking. It was hectic, but nice to have a full house. We ate and ate, and ate some more, then played games ( a family ritual, typically Scrabble, Scattegories, Guesstures, or Trivial Pursuit). Good times were had by all, but after cleaning up and getting things ready for kids to go to school, I was wiped out! So after all those excuses....here's my update:

Faith was finally feeling better, so I let her take Chip for a spin. The jump field was dry (about the only part of the farm that is), so after warming up we decided to work on her jumping. Faith took a bad spill a few months ago while jumping, so we have been working on rebuilding her confidence. She's been doing great with it and felt ready to try to do a small course. I set up a mini course (4 jumps) of 18" crossrails with a 2' crossrail as the last jump. After warming up over one of the crossrails, I reminded her to "think boring" to help relax and keep her pony chill. They both did great....I'm so proud! But more importantly Faith was proud of herself!

Faith and Cali hang out in the tack shed

 Jazzy's leg is all better and we moved the girls to a different pasture while it's slick. Pilgrim has pulled a chest muscle, and also seems to have some general yuck in his sheath....poor boy!

As for today, I tried to beat the rain and get to the farm shortly after dropping the kids off for school. After taking care of all the critters I had time to lunge Pilgrim, clean his boy parts, and check his muscle, which is doing better but the edema drained and he now looks like he has a boob growing in his armpit! He's not off though and seemed to enjoy getting to do some work. We worked on introducing extension in the canter, after realizing this doesn't mean...WOOHOO I GET TO RUN...he actually has a beautiful extension! All in all it was pretty easy to teach since Pilgrim seems to think it's pretty fun! That was about all we got in before the skies opened up on us. I have a new student starting this weekend....she's just turned 4....I love them at that age!