Day 4 Level 3 Freestyle - Canter

So I wrote this post last night and the wifi here gets overloaded at night and it wouldn't publish. Lesson learned? Save an offline copy! Here goes take 2.

It was 8 degrees driving to the ranch at 7am and 29 degrees on the way back at 6pm. Those are the variances. It doesn't stay cold for long once the sun is high.

So more team building with moving planks of wood on our feet as a team, today a figure 8 around the hitching rails from the lodge driveway. For those of you not familiar with the ranch that is a long way! We're over this particular team exercise now lol. Yes, we lost. 😝








So after some revision in the class on bow ties, we headed out to the playground again.
Again for those who have not been here, here is the walk from near where the horse pens are to nearly inside the playground - thanks Dixie.

We started with follow the rail around this corral.
It's huge to say the least, some rode inside, I rode outside with others. You can see how big it is on the 2nd photo.












We trotted then cantered. I started on the uphill part of the circle and I guess we did 3/4 of the outside before we trotted again, both directions. At trot we were high fiving the riders in the inside going the opposite direction but we refrained from that in canter for today lol. This along with having not cantered Dixie before was huge for me. I haven't cantered really much at all since 2011, different saddle and bouncy warmblood combo, I lost my seat security but we've been working a lot on balance and core strength this year.

We had to grade our own balance at the beginning of the course. I said 10.

Then we did some up and down work down into the empty pond, up the hill and over the smaller side of this jump, and off the edge again.














Then - point to point from cone to cone if you look closely, over two logs. Yes jumps.













Loads of fun. I really enjoyed it.
And it was only lunch time!

After some food (I'm really only still getting hungry at 9-10am) we practised point to point over obstacles and bow ties again. I managed to do trot to canter bow ties first time ever... Yay. Really pleased with today.

This is Dixie doing some yoga on the bridge and having a LB reward. Rest.








Look who we found.






Bye for now - Friday already tomorrow. Well actually today but you know what I mean.

Location:Parelli Ranch, Pagosa, CO, USA