Hands Free

Hello everybodies, how are you? I am fabulous. I have done two pony rides this week, both my short loopy. On my Wednesday pony ride I did something very foolish. I didn't know we were doing our short loopy, and decided to tell Cyd we were doing short so started doing speed shuffling towards the short trail. Troubles is, my legs got a bit tangled in themselves, and the ground was a bit slippy, and BOOM! down I went on the trail. I crashed my nose into the dirt, and then my knees, and we slid on the ground a bit. I did scrabbling, and Cyd gave me long reins so I could balance good, and she sat really still so as to not mess with me. I made it up to my feet, and was so pleased with myself that I went to bounce around, except I wasn't as straightened out as I thought I was and down I went again. I got up a bit faster this time, and Cyd wanted to jump off and check my poor face and knees, but I fell due to my bad behavings, so now we had to go up the trail I didn't want to go on. I was walking okay so a few more strides for my brain wasn't going to hurt me. I was a bit sulky but I went the way I didn't want to. After I stopped arguing with Cyd, she hopped off to check me. Luckily since it was soft ground I was totally fine, but quite muddy. We brushed the dirt off me, checked for cuts, then she hopped back up and turned me back the way to the trail we wanted to take. The rest of our ride was uneventful.

Today was more of a big deal! Cyd came and woke me up (it wasn't early but I was lazing around) I got my (borrowed) saddle, and Cyd's helmet, and... my liberty ring. Cyd hopped on me in my field, and we walked up the road to my trail. We had a bit of an incident with a dummy driving a box truck for a local business. Cyd is getting pretty mad at them, they don't listen and don't care that I have the right to be there too, and they couldn't wait 20 seconds for us to reach the next drive way to get off the road for safeties. Lucky I don't get too easily scared and just held my breath! 

Once we got to my trail, Cyd clipped my reins to the carabiner that lives on my saddle to hold my tailing rope, and picked up my neck loop. That was for my steering and my brakes, really it's just a slight addition to her seat and legs cues. I did really good, only needing a little bit of guidance. There's a spot on my trail where I try to go left, and today Cyd wants to go right. Sometimes we have quite a discussion about this, I *always* want to go left, sometimes we do, sometimes we don't. Well, we had a little chat about it, and I gave in and we went right. Cyd didn't have to pick up my reins once, it was all with my liberty ring and her seat. We went just a bit further, and Cyd decided to maybe be a little foolish. She reached down to my face, and I thought she was giving me a cookie, but you know what she did? Unclipped my rein! Then she reached the other side and unclipped that one too. I usually do my pony riding on a long rein, but this was total freedom.

You know what I did? Nothing! I was really good, did my walking and a little bit of trottings practice, did my steering, even in the tricky bits around the low branches. Cyd was so pleased with me. We tried to do a little bit of canter but I don't like to do canter in this saddle. I didn't have my reins attached all the way until we got back to the road. Cyd put them on then for safeties, but only picked them up when there were cars around me. See how grown up I'm getting? After some (lots!) more practice, we're going to try doing it with nothing on my head. I only crashed one time, and it was a little crash into a sideways branch that we've crashed into even with my bridle, so we decided it doesn't count! Look we took movies to prove it!