Figuring it all Out

I don't even know where to begin.  The past few weeks have been super busy and stressful, and it feels like I have a lot to catch up the blog on but I can't think. 

Peebs got upgraded to a double stall

I think I've figured out a good work schedule for Peebs.  Ride 3-4 days a week, with 1-2 jump days and 1-2 flat/play days.  Doing two hard work days back to back tends to piss him off, and eventually we'll have to deal with that in prep for multi-day shows, but for now it's working.  We've trotted the barrel pattern when one of the teens set it up; we've hacked around bareback while the 4yr old baby stallion jumped (Peebs is a great babysitter and couch except when he thinks he needs to get as close to the stud as possible.  He loves him some Rogue!); we've gone for walks down the road.

We had a good lesson last week, managing to put together a whole course.  I need to work on not dropping my hands before the fence, and Peebs needs to get over having more a feel in his mouth. He wanted to have a fit over it, but I didn't let it bother me and we avoided a battle.  That's a big step for me, not getting sucked into an argument.

We also jumped an oxer and didn't die!

 Another big step was jumping the oxer above.  When I don't jump them for a while oxers become super scary. Setting it up in a one stride is fairly safe; all I have to do it get him to the first fence and hang on. Easier said then done of course.  The first time through after it went up to the oxer I let Peebs stall out coming in and he Supermaned through it.  As awful as it felt (and I'm sure it looked awful) I never once questioned that he was going to stop or we were going to die. I slipped my reins, sat up, and put on leg and trusted him enough to get us out of it. And he did. I don't think I'll ever take for granted having a horse I can do that on.  As much I love Phoenix and he was an awesome horse, I'm 99% certain he would have stopped in that scenario and more than likely I would have come off. Buddy would have gone for it, but it took me a long time to trust that he would. Peebs just has that special something that makes it easy for me to sit up and leg him on in bad spots and trust that he's going to get us out.

On a day he couldn't horse.  There were bugs, and new horses in the barn and spring cleaning. ADD pony to the max