Back to School Week 1

 I took Cinder up to SF last Sunday. She settled into her stall pretty easily and happily munched on hay and used the auto waterer without any issues. A let her have Monday off to get turned out and get settled, and apparently Cin and A’s gelding Metro hit it off. They played “balls to the wall” and Cinder lost both of her bell boots but did keep all four shoes on .

Friends that play together drink together 

A rode Cinder on Tuesday and said Cinder picked up right where she left off. She’s a little out of shape, and got a little quick in her first canter, but was very well behaved and remembered everything A asked of her. They rode in the indoor and finished the cooling out on one of the trails. Apparently Cinder was very interested in the scenery but didn’t spook at anything. 

The property is built on the side of a hill so  Cin will get some good booty workouts

I went up Friday for my lesson and had a great one. Both Cin and I are out of shape so we mostly trotted with plenty of walk breaks. We got some good stretchy trot work and attempted our first walk-canter transitions. We definitely need work on that but our trot-canters are getting much better. 

We finished up by working through a trot pole grid. There was an outside line set up with a 6” cavaletti set up in the middle. A took the fences down and set trot poles, so it was trot poles, cavaletti, trot poles. My instructions were to steer and keep my leg on. A said we need to let Cin make mistakes so she can learn from them and not hold her hand. Going to the left Cinder wants to drift to the inside and I needed more left leg to keep her straight. Tracking right was easier, until Cinder was surprised by the second set of trot poles and almost stopped. I clucked at her so she only paused and managed to navigate the poles without issue. We went back and forth a few times till we smoothed it and quit with that.

I’m trying to find a way to steal this giant mountain block from the h/j program at SF.