I’m very behind on blogging. I think I got tired and then decided I didn’t care? I had some good rides and then took most of last week off because work tried to kill me and I gave up and then had a bunch more fabulous rides this past weekend and a lesson this morning. So I guess it’s time I blog? Or not?

A couple of weeks ago, Nay Nay decided that he no longer wanted to jump this one jump he loved. He didn’t want to walk over it or anything. Other stuff? Fine. His favorite jump? Nope. So I just hopped off and walked him over it. He followed me like a puppy. Since then, everything has changed. Before I get on, I decide what jumps I want to work on and we set them to our chosen height and fill (we started by removing flowers, now? we don’t care about the damn flowers) and we just walk over them before I get on. I walk, Nay follows me and all stress is completely gone. It’s like he saw he walk over it and suddenly something clicked and BAM! He realizes that we go over jumps? I don’t know but it’s working. Nerves and hesitation are gone. We’ve added several (5-6 difference fences) difference jumps with boxes and gates to our repertoire now. They’re tiny. Like under 2′, but who cares?

This weekend we strung together several into a mini trot course and mostly I had to work on keeping him trotting in between. He has enthusiasm for the jumps and often will canter out nicely, but the rest of the time? Nay thinks sleep is good. He also gets bored easily and while he’ll put out a good effort once or twice, he’s learned that he can also land in the trot and save calories.

Our right lead is hit and miss. Today we worked less on picking it up (there was a giant truck removing the barn’s manure pile and I was just thrilled that Nay wasn’t bothered by the that) and rather focus on landing the lead from our end jump. He had other ideas… We eventually got there. The thing with the right lead? Once we get it? His right lead canter is SO MUCH NICER AND MORE BALANCED AND EVEN than his left lead. It’s just picking it up that’s an issue. And then he gets stressed out. So… We’re still working on it. I’m going to see about getting some body work done and seeing if that helps.

But we’re getting places. Hopefully I’ll have some folks to ride with this weekend and I’ll have some updated videos. These are from a couple weekends ago and I feel like we’ve progressed so much already. But, media is media. LOL.