Mid week holidays

Wednesday was a public holiday here in Aus, and one of the few where nothing is open because it's a day of respect and acknowledging those who lost their lives for our country.

I keep meaning to take the horses up to the pony club again and keep not doing it so I decided a public holiday was the perfect opportunity to just do it. I got Husband to come along to ride Coolie too because I really wanted to jump Henry over some solid fences for the first time.

I lunged Henry first. As you can imagine he was a total crazy horse. Wild. Uncontrollable.

Much wild. 

He did a few little dolphin leaps and was very concerned about some kids playing in the bush up the road but settled fine. I hopped on and warmed up in an arena. Husband was riding Coolie all around the place and Henry just went right to work. He is definitely happiest in canter and just cruises along. I let him canter for quite a while and then we headed out to the XC course.

Henry's happy place

It's not a huge area, but it has lots of little jumps all are well built and safe to introduce baby horses to. Plus they start out at 45 and have the bigger 65 and 80 equivalent. There are feeders, logs, banks, tyres, ramps. Plenty for baby horses to see!

All the jumps are very encouraging so I went and got started right away, trotting a little log pile. It was no big deal so we trotted a bigger, brightly painted log pile. Wild child hopped right over. This horse is crazy, I tell ya!

Look at him go!

We moved onto a little feeder which he popped over both reins, then I threw caution to the wind and decided to jump him over the biggest jump he's ever done. A whole 65cm! He jumped it and cantered away happily. Yup. Wild!

Weeeeee!

Yup, biggest jump

We trotted over the ditch a few times, but he's done that before and it wasn't a problem, and went up and down the bank. Also no issues there. Although he was a little interpretive about going up it!

Little ditch

We moved onto the tyres, which i though might be a little more scary, since they are a very different shape and brightly painted. We trotted in and jumped them like it was no big deal. We jumped them the other way and cantered down to a little white fence which was the only thing he worried about all day, getting a little wobbly on approach but jumped anyway! We jumped the 3 heights of the tyres which were the biggest widest things he's ever seen. 

Not scary tyres

I took him over and jumped the little ramp, then the bigger ramp. Husband also jumped the little ramp, and the log pile his first jumps ever. Coolie made sure he looked after his dad too.

Not the best picture but I'm very proud of them!

Once Henry had seen all the jumps individually, I strung them all together in a little course. We cantered a few but trotted most, he is still working out what to do with his legs so I wanted to keep the confidence high by trotting. Honestly I feel so excited about this little guy, and I really think he likes his new job! 

You get the idea

There were green moments, and not everything went perfectly but Henry listened, jumped and kept his head. He got a lot of wrong spots to jumps and expressed himself accordingly, but he got a lot of really great spots too. 

Officially the biggest he's jumped

He was a total star and I am still buzzing! I'm so glad I am taking things slow with him, I think it's paying off because he has a solid understanding of what he needs to do, he feels confident in himself and that I wont ask him to do anything too crazy, and he is brave! Clever pony!