The Jumping Grey

When I pondered where I would ride and what I would do yesterday, I simply could not fathom the idea of doing the same trails yet another day. None of the options I could come up with for the evening sounded appealing. I needed a change of pace.

I pulled both horses from the pasture and grained them and sent their hair a-flying (hurrah for full-blown shedding and spring!), and then set Q free to graze about the barnyard and tacked Griffin up for a change. I don't think the grey horse has been out on a solo ride yet this year!

Griffin was a bit concerned about how the landscape around the creek crossing has changed recently, so I ended up having to dismount and lead him past, remounting in the creek proper. Fortunately, he was a solid citizen after!

I ground tied him in the back field (good pony) while I rearranged my jumps. I set them up like the below, with the cavaletti at the 18" setting and the standards as ground poles.

Brown cavaletti; blue standards as ground poles

I worked with Griffin at the walk for a time, circling left and right, doing figure 8s, serpentines, and combinations thereof. Once I had his attention, we began walking over all of the ground poles, looping around to do them again and again in various combinations. Happy with my calm and focused horse, we repeated this at the trot for a time.

Griffin was such a star. My only goal was to give him a good ride with praise and set him up for as much success as possible. I didn't know what to expect from him as we hadn't done much work yet this year! He definitely blew my socks off.

Finally, we trotted the 18" cavaletti for a time. I even took a few moments to set up my cell phone to capture some proof. Pictures or it didn't happen, right?

Griffin loves jumping so much. I'm really looking forward to more exercises with it through the warmer months!

I absolutely adore him. And his dirty, dirty face!