Derp. Derp.

Is it just me, the angle of the camera, or is his butt getting a little bigger?

Had a great ride on ponykins, with lots of clicking in his brain.  Contact can be maintained, you can go forward, all of this is okay.  Lots of trot work with circles and serpentines and even a little bit of lateral work.  And then I felt like we cantered for days, also with a lot of circles.  We had a bit of an issue breaking when tracking right and then picking up the correct lead.  I think he'd benefit from some chiro work, because it's been forever and he's had so many body changes.

The BM's daughter was riding when I went in to the ring, but we were able to stay out of each other's way.  I'm learning more about Western riding and I really haven't been giving it enough credit.  While I don't agree with some of the practices, just like I don't agree with some of the English practices, they definitely put in a lot of hard work.  I think the kid would be killer at dressage.

I forgot to mention this, but my barn has an eventer!  I met her the other night.  She's got a huge, bay OTTB (I think I've shown him in some photos with Arch - he's got like a hand on my Kid) named Johnny.  She was out of town for a month and recently came back and is super keen on getting Johnny fit.  She was asking me if there were any galloping spots around.  Uh.. there's nothing in Savannah.  But she was lunging when I took Archie out of the ring to go on our trail ride.  Her horse is a nice mover and I'm very excited to watch her bring him back to par.  I asked her what level they did and she said Novice.  I think she said the only thing holding them back from Training was the dressage, because he absolutely loves cross country.  I hope she takes some lessons with T3 and I hope I can manage to watch some.

Archie and I had a couple Come To Jesus moments on our trail ride.  First, he didn't want to cross the ditch.  I guess because it recently dried out and is still sort of black and muddy.  And then he didn't want to go down the area that takes us to the sandy road/river/swamp thing.  Dipshit spun a few times and the next thing I know, he's falling into the drainage pipe.  I growled at him - because the monkey on your back should be scarier than anything in the woods.  We had a nice, forward, marchy walk after that.

You know I love showing vague, blurry photos of where things have happened.  Pipe is hidden in that green growth.

Like this.  WTF is this?

After I rode, there was a moment when BO, Johnny's mom, and Marlboro's mom were all at the barn.  Night was setting and we were talking about taking a group trail ride soon.  Bliss, guys.  Bliss.

Finished version!

Backside.