Ride 74 - Another First - Hint it begins with J and ends with ing!

I LOVE the above picture even if he looks almost butt high lol!

So I went out for a short ride to get my final two point challenge time and ended up riding forty minutes!  My how time flies when you're having fun.  :)  My two point was only four minutes so there was no improvement... I wonder why... because I didn't practice duh LOL!!  I don't really consider it a failure though because 2pointober got me out and riding and I've done more with Chrome this month than I have in his whole riding career!  I'm so proud of us both for learning to trust each other and pushing our boundaries.  It's been a blast.

November is starting off with a blast too!!!!  I jumped Chrome!!!!!!

He was feeling very energetic because it was cold and the mare across the street was alone and neighing (her buddies were at a rodeo).  The above picture shows us standing at our front gate so you can see how close their pasture is!  It's literally right across the road.  :)

Jumping was totally not planned.  I had mentioned jumping him over some trees we have laying in the yard (had to cut them down to run power to our house when we built it) and hubby jokingly said he wouldn't do it (I was bareback when I mentioned it, but not today).  So as I was coming back down the driveway I looked over at the tree and thought... heck I'll do it!!  He totally jumped it!  Check out the video!


As you can see he jumped them, trotted after all of them except one he actually cantered away from and he even trotted over once when it got boring lol.  We jumped them about six times I think.  The first tree was only fourteen inches high and the second one was sixteen inches.  Not big at all.  It literally felt like a canter stride, not a jump hehe.  I would love to try something taller sometime.  It's just too bad I had already lengthened my stirrups back out (feels weird after a month of them short!!), because I think shorter would have made my leg more stable.  Oh well we had a blast.  I think he really enjoyed it!  As you can see at the end of the video we did some cantering too.  The first canter he started on the left lead and then did a simple change into a right lead... I wonder why?  The left lead felt weird so maybe he was cross cantering?  I can't tell in the video.  Anyway his cantering is getting much stronger and he's able to sustain it longer!  I cantered him the entire length of the driveway at one point that wasn't caught on camera.

Other than jumping and cantering we also did some exploring through our trees, which I never do in the summer because of ticks. It was so much fun picking paths and having him step over all the fallen saplings.  I used to do that all the time and I missed it!  So fun!

Anyway I think that's all...  oh I forgot to mention he was grazing the whole time I did my two point hehe.  Also I was never really interested in jumping Chrome, but now that we have.... I kind of want to do it again!! Only higher next time!  Hehe!  :D  Now I see why you guys love it so much.  Thanks for reading!!

P.S.  Did you notice anything different about our gear in the video??

ETA:  It's hard to tell in the video, so I won't make you guess.  The difference is that all he was wearing was a halter with my reins attached to it.  No bridle or bit.  :D