Warmer Weather Finally

Been hauling down to Brooks to ride and the last few times its been quite busy.  I actually kinda liked it when I was riding by myself but Kali is way better when there are more riders in the arena, on Friday there was 6 in there each doing our own thing and she was totally relaxed and ready to go.  She is like a much more energetic horse since I got her teeth done, guess they needed it.  I got her trot real nice and freed up and now I am working on her lope, its a lot of work though cause she is so lazy and any touch on the reins she tries to stop.  But its been getting better, we can now make 2 laps around the arena with no trouble and I don't even have to ask hard anymore, but she still feels all sticky but I can see progress.

 (shes so cute :)

(except when her big ears are in funny places)

(And Jess, still got a big belly but I'm trying to get rid of it)

It was quite a bit warmer today than it was for a long time and I rode Kali first and was off in my own little world while trotting and she tried to stop about 4 times on a round and I was kinda annoyed at her until I looked at the clock, oops it was almost 10 minutes, haha no wonder she wanted to stop.  Probly the longest we have trotted at once all winter, she was breathing hard this time...hard to make her do.  So I let her catch her breath and we loped some both directions and called it quits.

(at home, gotta open the cooler so they can eat)

Jessie is starting to shed something terrible so took a while brushing her and then had a real nice ride, I love riding her when others are around cause she is so broke I can just do anything with her, today we worked on speeding up on the long sides and slower on the ends of the arena, at a lope.  Then we worked on trotting and moving her body sideways across the arena without going faster, she is getting so much better at that without going faster.  Then while cooling out I dropped the reins and stirrups and steered her around with my legs, was cool, been working on it for a while, but today we did the barrel pattern at a walk, that was a little harder since it gave us a specific point to turn at not just a generic turn.  Wanted a empty arena so I could video again to see the change from a month ago but so hard when so many people around.  I am at 19 rides and 17.5 hours on the horsemanship challenge, really got behind with that cold weather but still have 4 weeks left, I think I will finish.