A Well-Deserved Break for the Boys

Mid-roach.  It looks *okay*, I guess. 

I decided to give Gali the weekend off, other than roaching his mane on Saturday.  He absolutely hates having his mane pulled or braided, and it's way too thick to blade it and braid it, especially with him being a monster.  Last year, I was lazy, bladed it and went to shows with a tidy but unbraided mane, but this year, I knew that wouldn't fly.  We're starting first level work, and showing up unbraided is just sloppy.  All of that, plus the fact that he had rubbed out a HUGE chunk of it over the winter, made me just hack it off.  I'm not sure how I feel about it yet, but it's done, so I've gotta learn to like it.  It doesn't look as bad as I thought it might!  And Nicole had a good point - if his mane is up in braids, it's showing off almost as much of his neck as it is when it's roached.

The fact that Gali is a sweat monster and doesn't handle the heat very well made me think chopping it off might help him, too, so there's that.  I did seem to help him a little when I took him for a short ride yesterday in 90+ degree heat.  I dropped down to Training 2 and Training 3 with him for this weekend, so we just touched up on our one loop serpentines and getting a more expressive trot than we did last year.  His canter is definitely stronger and he seemed more willing to stretch down and out in our stretchy trot, so I'm expecting better scores than last year.  I figure, with missing so many shows already, I might as well try to get our training level scores over with before moving up, especially because those 15 m canter circles are still such a fight.  This week will be a nice break for him, just working in a training level frame, and not pushing him through the harder work we have been so diligently schooling.

Acorn also got a little bit of a break - on Saturday, when we went bear hunting, I had originally started off in the arena.  We ran through our T1 test, and he was such a good boy that we spent the rest of the time exploring the farm.  On Sunday, I decided to take a short lesson and jump him.  It worked out well, because my boots are still breaking in and riding for an hour just wasn't going to be fun.  Nicole and I set up a small course of 2' jumps in our under-construction jump field.  Acorn was REALLY excited to be ridden out of the arena, and to jump - he loves it.  We practiced a bending line a few times both away from the barn and uphill, and towards the barn and downhill.  Understandably, he wanted to get quicker going towards the barn and downhill, but he's a good pony and only needs a little bit of correction to understand what I want.  After our last time going down the bending line, I let him loosen up and canter a little more freely, and he loved it.  I think he'd be one hell of an event pony, honestly, because I think he would love it more than anything else in the world.