Talent coming out her ears!

The weather has been amazing here all week. So much so that I've been delighting in the outside arena. Rose loves the footing and is much happier working outside. I guess I'm only surprised by that because she's always worked in an indoor arena. I'll take it though, as I would much rather be outside too. The only mishap we've had with it is that, in the past couple years of only riding indoors and living in cloudy Portland I forgot all about something call UV rays.

Wicked bad sunburn!

Ugh. That happened on wednesday and it has been very painful. Although Thursday was beautiful out as well, I stayed indoors, overdosed on aloe, and gave Rose the day off. Yesterday the burn was slightly better, so I found some SPF 50 and went about reapplying it to my scorched skin every hour while I was outside.

Since Rose had had a sucessful flat week, and her injuries are nearly all gone, I decided to pop her over a couple little exes again. One of them was a one stride combo to a ground pole. I was curious to see if she could figure out her striding, and I like using poles as an early introduction to gymnastic work.

So, the results? Rose was born to jump! I had the most fun jumping her yesterday than I have had jumping a horse in years! She found all her distances, got her leads after the jumps (we trotted in for the most part), sorted out the one stride combo on her own, and seemed to really enjoy herself. The best part is that between the jumps she was nice and forward, collected, balanced, listening to my seat and half-halts, picked up all her feet over the little jumps...and on and on. I had so much fun with her and she was so proud of herself it was adorable! Now the hard part is going to be to hold back on only jump her once a week.

Happy trails and swooshing tails!