First solo english trail ride

Today after school I decided to work on calming drift down. He's been pretty hot since the ride with Callie, so I was going to try to work that out of him. 

We tacked up and went to the fields behind Callie's house. It was beautiful and we worked a lot on my balance and him slowing down. 

As we went further, I realized that they had logged the whole thing and planted corn. Less places to ride this summer, but oh well. We stopped by the highway so he wouldn't spook at the sound of the cars going by behind the trees.

 

Alright, drift! Time to go down through the woods! 

I worked on cantering in 2-point through the forest some, but didn't let him speed up in the fields because he kept tripping. We found the old barn and rode around a bit before continuing on our journey. 

And again loped through the forest before finding our way back home. In the last field, we spooked up a deer and Drift didn't understand why I wasn't letting him run with it. Dork. Connor slowed down to drive beside us and talk for a while and Drift acted really well, then we went back to the barn and untacked. Overall a good ride.

Summer is almost here

So today I had planned on just working with Drift on loading in the trailer, but Callie stopped by and wanted to ride. I still managed to get him fully loaded twice and he stood pretty well..

Then we let Drift and Two Step stand tied for a while so we could murder ticks and bring our tack out. Yes, we pulled all the ticks off of both horses, put them in a bowl of rubbing alcohol, and lit it on fire. The boys were pretty unimpressed, but Callie was sure we were going to set the trailer on fire. 

So we went on a short trail ride and the horses were being ornery as all get out. So we had the great idea to swim. 

Luckily my iPhone didn't decide to take a swim! We tried to jump at the same time and it was basically us screaming and the horses taking off. Obviously it's the beginning of the season still. 

Jumping

Neither of the boys have really jumped at all since like last year sometime. Whoops. I WAS planning on just doing some basic dressage stuff with Drift today to calm him a bit and get him back in the groove.. But that plan got screwed when I dragged some logs over. So I went to catch Drift anyway and realsies just how photogenic my horses are...

Thanks, guys.. Anyway so I tacked Drift up. English at first but my English stuff still doesn't fit him so after the second fall due to slipping saddle issues, I went western. And he actually jumped REALLY well once he got over being really fresh.

Ray was a whole other story... He refused every jump for over an hour and threw me once after LAUNCHING himself over a log. I eventually got him going a bit. 

So yeah! Pretty good day even though I'm going to hurt like all get out tomorrow. 

Trailer Restoration Project

Alrighty so I kinda have been holding this back for a bit until we got at least this far with the project, but I'm gonna release it now!! 

We got a new trailer. It was painted with like house paint and was rusty and dirty and just awful! 

So I took on the the task that took 8 hours straight... Cleaning... It actually cleaned up pretty nice and we got all the rust out of the butt bars so they work again and stuff like that! I was really excited with it! It was REALLY nasty though. The left is before cleaning and the right is after cleaning.

And we then sent it to Jeff and Jesse to get PAINTED!!! The top is white and the bottom is a navy blue that matches our truck!

And we finally got it back last night!!!! There's still some minor stuff I want to do, and we don't have the divider back yet, but we'll be getting it today and I'm super excited!!

We're going to be hauling SOMEWHERE soon just to try it out and stuff. I'm excited and overjoyed that it turned out so well! Can't wait to take the boys somewhere!