Baby horse things

Goggles had a "jump" lesson Monday. We'd previously tackled the dead grass patch left by the liverpool, so Monday we took on the long grass patches left between standards when all the fillers and poles had been put up for the impending storm. He snorted and leaped over the first one, but after he was doing that one calmly, he showed a great ability to generalize and did all the others calmly. He's pretty funny, once we got him started thinking about ground poles and such, things that used to be ignored have new meaning. Fallen Spanish moss and branches are suddenly suspicious "Do I have to interact with that in some way?" We've changed the world he's in a bit. 

JT had us doing little courses of grass patches and cavaletti. Eventually she introduced a baby bounce of cavaletti on the middle setting. The first time through I barely managed to get him over the second part. The second go through he managed to exit, so we slowed it down to the walk for two laps and then picked the trot back up. He definitely seems to struggle the most when he has to think about his front legs again while his hind legs are still doing something different. But slowing it down really helped him and he understood much better when we trotted again. 

He was pretty pleased with himself. The first one where the video cuts out early, we actually hopped the tiny log hiding in the grass and had a nice canter around until he came to some weeds he thought maybe he should jump and then came to a rather abrupt halt. 

We ended with a few hops over the single cavaletti on the highest setting. He's such a good egg and is trying his absolute hardest to figure out how this whole thing works. 

How freaking cute is this?!?!?

Weeeeee!! I has hind legs! 

JT rode him for the first time on Saturday and was really pleased with him. She said his canter was more balanced than she'd expected, and I needed to be careful not to shove him with my seat in it and mess that up. I had noticed that 20m circles at the canter are much easier than I had expected on a giant four year old. He struggles a lot bending his neck and shoulders, but is somehow pretty darn balanced through his body? 

Ben was finally sound enough to go for a 15 minute trot which really helped his swelling. He felt a bit funky, he still doesn't want to completely flex his fetlock and pastern where the swelling has stuck around the most. Hopefully soon he'll be back at it too.