Happy Day

We are having lovely weather right now. It's about 60 f in the mornings, with clear skies and a slight breeze. It warms up to mid eighties during the afternoon.

This is absolutely unheard of here. This is October weather, not August weather.

Whatever. It just makes a good ride better.

I think that Izzy is finally "greenbroke" in my opinion. I realize that this is a highly subjective term and not really all that important since I'm doing all my training myself, but it's a nice way to say that she's finally able to walk, trot, and canter both ways, goes over trot poles, lunges with no trouble, moves off my leg a tiny bit and is starting to learn to give to the bit. Her ground manners are good in a plain halter (not rope), and she stands to be groomed, clipped, or have her feet trimmed.

We have a long ways to go. She still doesn't think the whole "bath" thing is a good idea and I haven't pushed her much in that area. I just sponge her off on hot days and she fusses less about that than she used to. She needs to learn to reach for contact with the bit. She needs to move off my leg more effectively. She needs to learn to back calmly. We haven't really tried that in favor of just getting her to go forward. We need to work towards the ideals of the training scale. And of course, I want to jump.

That said, I'm ok with where we are. She's finally fun to ride, in my opinion. She's smart, brave, and usually willing. She has oodles of personality. She's not terribly spooky. She has almost no white, so she's easy to keep clean.

What more could a girl want?

(Ok, so I really, really want to go to the upcoming H/J show, but we're not ready, so I'll just go watch. Next year.)