BASTIAN!!!!

I finally made it out to Wolf Creek Stables to see my awesome, wonderful, chestnutty, perfect boy. My friend Samantha was visiting for a few days so it worked out perfectly, I had someone to drag along with me :)

His Summer Job Housing is quite nice. Nice roomy box stall, wonderful ventilation, water buckets that are scrubbed cleaner than most of my dinner dishes, and nightly turnout. He is one fat, sleek, happy boy.

So after much treat-feeding and a somewhat excessive amount of brushing by both myself and Samantha, we made our way to the outdoor. The outdoor at Wolf Creek is huge and filled with lovely lovely hunter jumps, which Bastian has been trucking over with wee little children. And by lovely I mean scary, lots of flowers, brush, rolltops, pine boughs and such. I'm intimidated by jumps that aren't A) under 2' and B)just a rail. But Bastian honestly doesn't care, he only cares when I care. If he looks at a fence out of inexperience all I have to do is say, "yes we are jumping this" and he says "okay!" If I sense his hesitency and answer with my own, then he says, "ah mom, if you don't think we should do this then lets not...." So jumping is more of a mental ride for me, I have to keep my head in the game 100%.

Anyway, after simply enjoying the wonderful walk/trot/canter on MY BASTIAN, we started trotting over a few cross rails, then we started trotting the scary stuff. He was so perfect! He didn't look at anything and just kinda hopped over everything. Then we started to get fancy and we cantered all those scary fences :) I was so pleased with him and he was going so well, that I decided to jumpt two more fences that he had not yet done with any of Tawny's students. One was a tiny rolltop, but pretty wide. I would say wider than it was tall and a 2'3" vertical that was set up on one side of the arena.

He was PERFECT!! He barely looked at the rolltop and jumped the 2'3" vertical like he'd been doing it all his life, I was so pleased with him. He's actually being a bit lazy and I need to engage him more with my leg, but I'll take the slower lazy Bastian for now until I get my jumping legs back. I'm anxious to get back out and ride him again :) Samantha was fabulous and snapped several great pics with her phone camera, a real feat considering that jumping photos are hard to time anyway!

Aint he cute!!! It was so wonderful and I am so dying to show again that I decided to try and take him to the schooling Combined Test at South Farm on October 1, we're going to do the Baby-Beginner Novice division so we have to do Beg. Novice Test A and then a 2' jumping course. South Farm puts on a nice show, so I'm super excited to go!

Also coming up on my schedule is the District Horse Show, this is my first year as the new manager...wish me luck! I'm thinking I have most of it under control, just a few things that might be iffy.....Once its over (September 11) I can really focus on me and my Bastian and our first ever Combined Test :)