Is that you, #childsatan?

BM wimped out from the cold Wednesday so we ended up back at the park. (It took me a long time to figure out what day that was even though it's only Saturday. Time is irrelevant at this point.) It was still a fun ride with lots of good gallops, even if I did lead us up a goat trail and Momo nearly led BM right off the side of the cliff.

honkers everywhere

including baby honkers!

Opie got Thursday off, and then I dragged out ten million poles and standards for some grid work on Friday. I needn't have bothered going through all the effort because I ended up dismantling half my work by the end.

I had a line of three big bounces along one long side (which is the only thing he did do really well), and a vertical one stride to oxer one stride to vertical across the diagonal. By the time we were done, I had the three bounces as half Xes, a crossrail on the diagonal, and another half X on the other long side.

The problem right off the bat was that I switched out his slow twist dee jumping bit for a french link eggbutt. He was tossing his head a few strides away the last time we jumped, and I do like to keep a feel of his mouth when jumping, so I thought it was me and I'd do him a solid by switching to something gentler.

Instead I think that's just him, and he took advantage by completely blowing through the bit unless I somehow managed to rip his head to the side and circle him in the middle of a bolt to the fence. Because if I didn't pull him right off of it, he had no problem crashing through the fence with his head pointed at the ceiling in a flat out run.

He's also apparently denoted the green striped poles his bugaboo and once again slammed on the brakes and refused to go near them until I made them an X.

I knocked everything down to idiot level pretty much immediately when I realized I had no brakes. I'm not particularly brave with stadium jumps on a good day, so I certainly wasn't going to mess around schooling my drama llama out of control horse over them in this weird world we're living in.

Even so, we spent a solid twenty minutes cantering over essentially elevated ground poles until I got it into his demonic brain that we do not bolt, rear, dirty stop, or go crashy crashies.

tbh i think the only reason we were able to end on a good note
was that it was 80* and he was exhausted. at least he got a good
bath out of the whole thing.

Needless to say, the slow twist is going back on. He also gets his teeth done Thursday, but in the end I think we're just going to have to repeat this exercise a few more times before jumping becomes blase again. This is only the second time he's jumped since quarantine went into effect so it's still VERY EXCITING.

The good news is, our barn has implemented a soft opening as of TODAY! Still tons and tons of rules and stipulations, but the big news is boarders no longer have to schedule times to come to the barn. We're still limited to number of riders in the ring at once, but not having to schedule personal horse time makes me feel so much less anxious.

he's so fit and strong (and clean) right now. hopefully he
goes back to using his powers for good.

BM and I head out to Oatka this afternoon where we might actually get to trail ride in warmth for once!