Rides 5-7 aka This Pony is Amazing

BB and I snuck in a last minute entry to the POP show this weekend and had our BN debut. His highlight of the day? Trying and succeeding at stealing alfalfa from an open hay bag I thought I'd hung far enough away from him in the trailer. Mine? One of the most fun XC runs I've had in a long time. 

I'm not posting videos for two reasons, one is that they're a bit shaky. My husband was kind enough to come along to meet BB and film, but when zoomed in his phone video is quite shaky. Two, our dressage test was ride five and stadium was ride six, so for his video blog debut I think he deserves to be shown off better. 

Dressage: I'm an idiot and misread times and showed up for dressage warm up with eight minutes not eighteen. We trotted a few circles, cantered both directions, then went in. We hadn't done a run through of this test, and I hadn't ridden it since Ben and I did one BN run back in 2022. But the lovely thing about going from a 17.1 creature to a 15 hand one is I had all the time in the world. Our canter transitions and canter work in general needs the most work. I have a really hard time not shoving into the transitions and I've been working on it, but there's still a long way to go. The rest of it was really pleasant but with plenty of opportunities to show more and be more consistent. Which makes it pretty exciting that we scored a 32.9. 

Stadium: In warm up JT encouraged me to get up off his back and ride him forward between fences. I am struggling with keeping my hands forward through the landing but not snapping forward too quickly on him and jumping ahead. We popped over a few warm up fences pleasantly and then went in to do the thing! The downside of going down in height is that the fences do look bigger in spite of him being a super scopey and talented jumper. I spent the first half of the course kind of gawking at things and then remembered I do kinda sorta know how to ride for the second half. We had two and four down, two I buried him at and it was an unimpressive vertical he just didn't get his knees up over. Four was a very similar story. Five through eight rode great though. 

Cross Country: I walked the course between dressage and stadium. JT essentially said he's trustworthy, just go out and have fun. And we did! 

#1 - Log box

#2 - Step table

#3 - Oreo coop 

#4 - The Villages

#5 - Bunker

#6 - FHP splash - his only squirrely moment, he broke from canter and then dawdled a little sideways before heading through the water

#7 - Green roll

#8AB - Turning tables (7 stride line)

#9 - Log

#10 - Ditch - I probably should've gotten his shoulders up more for this. He's so good and honest, but we kinda bombed over the ditch. 

#11 - Ramp - set purposely in the shade

#12 - Golden roll - I could feel him starting to get a bit tired around this point 

#13 - Hitch your wagon

#14 - Ocala water - he'd gotten his feet wet already so galloped on through this 

#15 - Log too

#16 - Lincoln logs

It was so much fun just galloping around and playing. Again, we learned more about each other as we went. If I kept him straight, he jumped SOOOO well. And any wiggliness didn't feel like he was looking for an opportunity to run out, it was just... slight crookedness? I'm not sure how to describe it. He is the most pleasant, talented pony, and I'm so excited to keep getting to know each other. He did pick up quite a forward gallop mostly of his own accord for the whole first 2/3 of the course before he got a bit worn out. We made it around 40 seconds faster than optimum time though, and we have a plan for his fitness going forward (aquatredding... long walk hacks...). With our two rails we dropped back to 9th place of 12. We would've finished in 3rd without those rails though. We've got an outing planned at a jumper show on Friday to practice that phase.