A Beautiful Morning

My world at 7:30 in the morning on a weekday. Can't even handle how incredible this is!

You guys.

My pony lives a mile away and it is MARVELOUS.

The weather forecast for this afternoon between 3-7 showed likely thunderstorms, so you know what I did?

I just rode before work.

Because I can do that now.

And I only had to get up at 6:00.

I was able to feed my minis, go to the barn, ride, and be home to start working at 8:30.

MY LIFE IS GREAT.

Even greater is the fact that when I walked up to the barn, Dino and Mabel were standing side-by-side like buddies! I'm absolutely thrilled that he's gotten over his donkaphobia and has become friendly with the girls instead of having to be constantly vigilant around them.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I left him loose in his stall again to groom and tack up, and let him munch on a flake of hay so he could relax and get some roughage in his belly before the ride. Dino is markedly more comfortable in his stall every day, which makes me feel so much better. We hacked down the hill to the cornfield again, this time with a plan to do a little flatwork.

Sully was an absolute looney toon when he saw Dino go out for a ride without him! I was a little concerned that WonderPony would react badly to Sully's galloping/bucking/carrying-on, but he just watched and wondered why his buddy was being so nutty. It was really, really easy to bring Dino's focus back to me. Small victory!

Dino was an absolute rockstar during our short ride! He softened to the bit so, so nicely and was lovely and forward the whole time. I did not ONCE have to reprimand him for not listening to me when I pushed the go button. I gave him one love-tap on the shoulder when he was spacing out and not listening to my lateral aids, but other than that it was a no-stick-or-spurs-required ride. So nice!

Glorious.

We worked on just some very basic w/t/c in big loops around the field with some smaller circles thrown in here and there. Again, I want these first few rides at the new farm to be very positive and happy experiences for Dino, so I'm asking for easy things that he can achieve without stress before I start putting the pressure on to really work hard. He stayed round just about the entire ride, and only really had trouble with his left lead canter, as is typical. That pesky right stifle just doesn't cooperate some days! Once I got off his back, softened my hand a bit and let him really move forward in the left lead instead of sitting and asking him to be really round and put-together, he had a much easier time. Marching up and down the big hills every day will do a lot of good for that, I think!

After about 25 minutes of good, pleasant work we walked back up the hill and were done for the day. I'm so, so happy we had such a nice, relaxed, focused ride and I absolutely LOVE having my pony so close to home! The fact that he has a couple new donkey friends is just the icing on the cake.

Best Wednesday morning ever!