Gallopin' Feet

This morning I dragged my sleepy self off to M's thinking I'd have a light dressage ride, sort out the connection stuff a bit more, and then help her set jumps for a grid school for some kids heading to their pony club rating.

But of course, M had a different plan. "If you want to go, Spike and I are going to go down the hill, do some trot and canter sets in the meadow, and then come back up. If you WANT to go. You don't HAVE to."

But I think I had to.

The bad news is, I only keep one saddle at a time at M's because I need one at home to ride Red (and also my diamond shoes are too tight) so I only had the dressage saddle. I just shortened the stirrups as much as I could handle with the straight flap and off we went! It was fine, really. In some ways having the longer leg was good when he did screw around a little bit.

I was wishing so hard for this saddle

Man, it was fun. I mean, Mo whined a little bit on the hill and he wanted to lead (as did Spike so we just took turns), but I finally had a horse that was trotting forward with zero input from me. I wasn't sure how the cantering would go because he's never done that with another horse around. He's cantered in the open on a couple XC schools, but that's it. There was always another jump to think about. We didn't really plan to gallop, but he did switch to a gallop here and there when he was pissed at Spike.

It was so much fun. His gallop is going to be perfect. In the first canter set, I was all, "I should bridge my reins," so I did that, and then M noticed and was like, "Show jump rider, huh? Riiiiiight." Ha. The old instincts were kicking in. At one point when I was passing her, I yelled, "Next time you have to tell me before I come over that we're doing this so I can bring my jump saddle!"

Yeah, this get-up says "go gallop" all over it, huh?

I had a really great time, and I think Mo did too. He especially liked getting to be in front. It will be interesting to see if this translates into a more forward-thinking horse on the flat next week. Fingers crossed.

Moral of the story: The first time you gallop your baby horse, do it in the dressage tack. :D