New Horses(Thursday/Saturday)

Well Rocky is officially on winter break so on Thursday I rode Roxy. I rode her a couple times over the summer when she first got to the barn and she's really come along way from how nervous she used to be. Her canter is still weird, it really throws your leg back and when you aren't along the wall she's really wiggly. For the most part she was good, she did start to rush at the yellow jump but after a few times over the other two she was good to go. She's still new to jumping so sometimes she forgets about her back end when she really tries to jump ahead/up with her front end. So grabbing mane = important on her. Especially with being new to it, I don't want her to think jumping is painful by catching her mouth. She was more fun than I thought she would be for jumping and she wasn't the horse I wanted to ride, although other than Rocky I don't know who else there would be. And really I should be grateful just to have a horse to ride at all. Although it's been along time since I've had to look at the white board to find out who I was riding, plus it will be harder to the get the whole "team mate/bond" going on since it seems like I'll be going between horses until winters over the snows gone and who the hell knows when that will be.

Today I rode Zander and I liked him a lot more than I thought I would! I'm not sure why I thought I wouldn't like him, but he was fantastic. He has a really slow walk but once he's trotting or cantering he's got a lot of go! I was a bit worried, since he was compared to a sports car on ice as to how he would be when we got going and he was great. Sports car with snow tires.
He also bridles up really well and riding with more contact is something I really have to work and trying to "ball up" their energy rather than letting them getting long and strung out. Supposed to think of them as springs, which was the analogy with Pony. So must work on that. It seems to help that he has a German martingale, it does something different than a standing martingale I don't remember what exactly but it has something to do with flexing rather than keeping them from throwing their head around. We don't use it for jumping, just flat.
Zander is a lot of fun to jump! He does slow down abit before the jump if you don't keep leg on, but he has such a lovely jump, and no pain at the trot!! So that's exciting. He feels so different than Rocky, he's so narrow with such a long neck and he keeps he's head pretty low, some adjusting to do I think. It will be a different winter that's for sure, I guess we'll see how it pays of in the spring.

that's what a German martingale looks like, it straps around the neck and then the other two straps loop through the bit and then clips to loops on the reins.