Celebrating Spring

I considered posting this video without a long wall of text, but then realized there are things to say about it. 

Butterball and I joined two friends at Naked Horse on Friday, which just so happened to be the first day of spring. It was an absolutely gorgeous day. Clear blue skies and the perfect temp. And pony pants felt just delighted to be out there. Our rides go best when I have *something* to half half to the fence. Energy has to be there first, then I can half half that energy to keep him from getting longer towards the fence. He came out energetic and maybe a tad spooky, but I channeled the energy to an absolutely wonderful ride. We had two other loops around that aren't on video. First around some simpler lines then went from the baby coffin to vertical on mound down through the crater to the cabin on the other side. 

And while it wasn't perfect, you can see where I let him get too long into the barrels at the coffin and then where I didn't have enough energy for the log in the water, it felt absolutely amazing. Butterball was more than happy to make up for my mistakes and continue boldly through the questions. And similar to our last school at Sweet Dixie we focused on some more technical questions rather than height. Skinnies? Angled ditch? All no problem, he happily ate it all up. 

I didn't realize until I pulled up the Sweet Dixie link that this was our first time out cross country in four months! We had the little trip to Star Farm, but since that was the same week we pulled his shoes, that barely counts. For this trip I put his scoot boots on his hinds just in case they were a little sore given his late changes in our lesson on Wednesday. But the footing was perfect and soft so I'm sure he would've been fine without them. 

Perfect pony

I texted PW afterwards that I wasn't done eventing. This pony is too good and too delighted to be out there to not keep doing this!