Outside Riding.

Yesterday was Robert's last ride before Hubby and I take off on our ten hour road trip to Suburbia, IL (Naperville, for you midwesterners that are curious). Hubby's family invited themselves out for their own Thanksgiving Saturday since I was taking their precious child away from them for the first holiday ever. Boo-frickin-hoo is all I have to say about that. For those of you that like your in-laws, three cheers for you. You can have mine, too.

So Pony Face. We went up to the outdoor since it was fifty-ish outside and sunny, and how long is that going to last? We warmed up with plenty of walk, and then moved on to the trot. We started with a lot of this:

Because Bobby's focus and level of cooperation for dressage is about negative zero in the outdoor. Eventually we worked our way into this:

 After a lot of over-bending at the walk--my best friend in getting Bobby's crooked head out of the clouds.

I tried to work on a more uphill carriage, but Bobby said, "The out of doors is for running and jumping, not dressaging." A.K.A. "Fuck you." Every now and then we got some fancy "indoor moments":

But we finished the trot with a soft, quiet albeit more working hunter looking trot:

nagging with my leg. nag, nag, nag.
must stop that. again.

I finished with a canter circle to the left to see if he would change behind since he's always worse outside. Nope! Nothing! Picked up the canter to the right to check as well, went to turn between the oxer and a pole on the ground (the route for a circle we'd done multiple times already). He saw that pole as we turned in and BAM--locked on ala earlier obnoxiousness. Fortunately we were already on a circle so I was able to pull his head around as he tried to take a flying leap over the standard. Dude. Stop obsessing over jumping! Sometimes you have to be a dressage horse!

I made him walk through twice. The first time, we turned in and he jumped into the canter. Oh hell no. Halt, back, stand. Ass. He walked through fine the second time and we were able to make a quiet canter circle with no swapping behind or trying to jump innocent poles.

seperated at birth: sunny and bobby like to think up similar issues
for sue and i to work on. today was a lack of steering. 

After half an hour of standing in a cooler and getting curried (cannot wait to clip him again!), I turned the beastie out and fed him an entire bag of carrots for his own early Thanksgiving.

"i stands nice fer you. i gets more cookies now?"

Ranger got in on the action, too: