I PROMISE I will have pictures eventually.

That said, gave the baby yesterday off for being such a good girl, and had her have a massage with Pat. Went back to business as usual today.

Set up two canter poles down the long side, spaced two strides apart. My evil(!) plan here is to teach her that obstacles are a heads-up kind of thing. Started by walking her over the pole and halting her with two feet on either side. If she walked too far forward, we backed up until our front feet were on one side and our back feet were on the other. Then she got wither scritchies and walked to the second pole. Wash, rinse, repeat.

After a few reps, started trotting them. First time, same halt-over-pole deal. Second time, we trotted through, third time, halted, trotted second pole, and halted. Basically variations on either rein, but using the pole as an external half-halt.

Progressed to canter. And of course, we had the looope. Since we had an extra gear to fiddle with, (lope and canter-canter), we started by halting square over the pole, doing a walk- lope, and then loping through the second. The next time through, we cantered through both poles. Walk break, wither scritchies, and then we worked on extending and compressing our strides.

We actually fit four lope strides between the canter poles, which kind of scares me a little. We attempted taking it as a one-stride a couple times as well, which was not particularly comfortable. Two for working canter and three for looope seemed to be the magic number. Of course, we had variations to continue in the pole-as-a-heads-up tangent, but you get the idea. Hopefully, our courses will be smoother if we work on this a little bit.

No plans for jumping this week, unless hell freezes over or we are magically awesome and whisked to some fanceh show.Totally random, but Friday is my birthday, and we are either going to Princess Place (not what you think it is) or farting around an informal local hunter pace, trailer registration permitting. Gotta love being a horse person. You know it's sad when tins of SWAT and the prospect of strenuous activity in formal clothes make you giddy.