First ride of the 2015

Today was a lovely 40+ degrees and a great day for a quick jump school in the field to start off the new year.  Soonie was great as usual; I rode like a blind monkey on a couple of occasions, but he jumped from wherever I placed him.  He had some good moments where he really waited when I asked and showed patience, and nothing was a fight like earlier this summer.  We had good rhythm and when I rode that rhythm (instead of checking out mentally or trying to adjust), we had several lovely fences in a row.  We also had great flying lead changes both in the flat warm up and during the jumping exercises, when I focused on changes from the leg on a straight line (I won't lie, I was inspired from the flat/gymnastic sessions of the George Morris Horseyship Thingy and their flying change schooling).  Soon's changes have always been very good, and he learned fast early on with the leg yield off the new inside leg into the new outside leg for the swap.

It is supposed to be good weather tomorrow, and I'm resisting the urge to jump again.  He did everything I told him today and was perfectly happy about it, so tomorrow we'll go for a short hack instead.  He has worked hard this week, so tomorrow is a good time for a light ride.

Very excited about working

Took some photos after the ride as well (shocker!) with the sun setting and Soonie looking at the pretty Fjord lady out in the field:

I thought this was pretty

Such a handsome boy!

"Mmm.  I just pooped."

I love his eye

Allegedly, it will be in the mid-sixties and rainy on Sunday, so if the horses are likely to stay in and it's warm enough, then I'll bathe Bubba and reclip him.  I wasn't intending to redo the clip this early, but the weather is giving me a window for bath time, and I feel like capitalizing on it.  I'm not looking forward to it, but he'll be good to go until late March/early April when I do a full body clip and save myself the misery of shedding him out again.  NEVER AGAIN.

In other news, a couple of screenshots from Sunday's indoor review of the "arrowhead" exercise (aka our mounting block V-jump):