I’m not really sure how it’s Wednesday already. These things just happen like *poof*.

I feel like we’re back in our groove a bit more over here now. We had our first jump lesson since our break (our first since like… mid-June I think actually) and Presto was legit kind of feral. We just did some small jumps, with a turning exercise that meant he had to rock back and pay attention. He wasn’t a real big fan of either of those things, he was just real excited to be doing jompies again. We’ve got another lesson on Thursday so hopefully that one is a bit less exciting.

Presto does look and feel really good though. I think the break combined with a lot of the strength work we’ve been doing has got him filled out in all the right places. Plus, ya know… age. Getting close to 6 and half now, like a legit big boy. Since his break he’s been doing a butt-ton (scientific measurement) of poles in all of his rides particularly at the walk and trot. Like lots of poles. Over and over.

At first he was really inconsistent through them, not really self-regulating his effort. Now he’s a pole master, and I’ve been able to make them a bit harder. My favorite exercise is putting him on a circle at the trot, walking right before the poles, and then picking up the trot again right after the last one. Over and over. We’ve been able to move the transitions closer and closer to the poles, to the point where he’s walking like AT the first pole now, and he’s keeping a nice marching energy the second he comes down to walk. Then same thing on the other side – crisp step up into trot with the same power and energy that he had over the poles. This week we started playing with it a bit at the canter too, cantering up to it, walking through, and then picking up canter again. His walk-canter is pretty good but the canter-walk isn’t quite there yet. He was trying though!

Yesterday we went over to Majestic to trot and canter some hills. It took until the 3rd hill for him to stop bucking his way up. Which like… Henry bucking is funny because it’s not really bucking, its just leaping that has no real chance of unseating you. Presto bucking is not funny because he’s a big athletic mofo that corkscrews his entire body when he bucks. I’m less confident about my ability to always stick that.

In other news he completed his re-vamped flu shot series for his FEI passport last week, so that got sent back to USEF for hopefully final approval. And we entered the August Ocala show that’s in a couple weeks. It will likely be hot so we may end up just doing a lope around the Modified, but with the show schedule options and our goals toward the end of the season (and the fact that we had to scratch Stable View), we felt like he needed to hit this one. I’ll prob enter a CT the weekend before at a schooling show so we can at least do the dressage test (it’s test C, which means his first long court test) and jump around something at height.

In other news, I have some stuff for sale! If anyone is looking shoot me a PM on any of my socials or you can send me an email through the contact page here.