What's one more?

In addition to Buddy and Zoe, I've agreed to work another horse at the barn once or twice a week for his owner.  Leo is a late teen aged QH gelding, whose done a bit of everything.  Jake, his owner, mainly just trail rides him, but had him leased to a high school girl who was gaming on him.  The girl quit abruptly and Jake's wife just gave birth to their second son so poor Leo hasn't gotten worked in about a month.  Jake just wants him to get out and have a little tune up so it's shouldn't take too much of my time. And the best part of it is Jake owns a bar that a bunch of us from the barn frequent and I'll get a bar tab in exchange for riding!!


Leo and Buddy last summer.  Leo beat the stuffing out of Bud so they were separated.

 

I gave Bud Sunday and Monday off after the dressage ride and turned him out in the arena for a little play time.  I put him and Phoenix out together on Sunday and it was adorable.  They scratched each other's necks and nuzzled. 

Aren't they cute?!

Yesterday it was pouring so I set up an exercise in the indoor for us to work over.  It's a crossrail on the center line with two placing poles on each side diagonal to the jump (see wonderful illustration below.  Jen calls it the Diamond of Death.  The poles are 9ft from the x-rail and it's meant to be ridden on the diagonal.

 It really forces you to be straight and accurate on your line.  Unfortunately it didn't work so well for Buddy.  Going right to left was fine, but left to right he was pretty over bent and didn't really care if he hit the pole.  We did it decently a couple times then I called it quit. 

Today it was dry-ish and not raining when I got to the barn so we went outside and worked over a gymnastic one of the other girls had set over the weekend.  It was a trot in x-rail bounce to a vertical bounce to an oxer.  We started with just the first bounce and it took Buddy a couple times to get the concept that he had to jump the x-rail.  Once he got it we added the oxer.  It went pretty well, but he did drift to the right a bit.  Since he had jumped two days in a row I didn't do it too many times.