You know what @4horses and @DiamondJubilee you can see a happy horse. They are so much fun to train. Trainable because they enjoy working for you, they want to participate and interact. Sometimes I want to say I see it as play together. My daughter has had that connection with all our homebreds.
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I love how excited and supportive your coach is.
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She is the best. I’m so lucky to have her!
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Just over 3 full months of under saddle training and we have had 3 lessons now. Just a handful of times jumping, but we have been working a lot on ground poles and cantering over just the little flower boxes for confidence.
Had the dentist put the other week as he was getting head fussy (new) and he had some sharp points and cheek ulcers. Much better now that the sharp points are gone and recheck in 6 months. Had a chiro appt last week as well to see if anything is amiss but all was good on that front!
Taking it day by day but he’s getting a tad braver in the ring (is terrified of the corners with stuff in them but we are working on it) but is oddly super brave jumping. Does not say no and has been jumping some small stuff with flowers and so far so good. Just lots of time, practise and praise. I need to work on not pulling the inside rein to turn! He tends to get fussy then as he does not like to have much contact, so is something I really need to work on.
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You are SUCH a lovely rider. Loving these updates!
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@c0608524 - wow, thank you so much. I never really thought of myself as a lovely rider at all. Honestly. I know I can be sticky and try my best, but I always feel so stiff and hesitant due to always riding so many greenies, and as much as I want to be trusting and soft, I have a hard time doing it. I love watching soft riders that have more trust and flow than I do, and I try to emulate them. But I’ll take the compliment, it means a lot to me <3
We are just planning our very first hunter schooling show mid April. Its the mighty 18" division, but we’ve only jumped a handful of times, never worked on changes (no where near that) so I’m just hoping for a nice, relaxed “show”. Its a tad far for me so we are planning on making a trip of it and staying at my brothers for one night (as he is 15mins from the show grounds - I’m 2hr away) and then moving in on the Saturday night to the showgrounds and showing Sunday early. Schooling is at 7-8am and our division is bright an early at 8am (I usually like to go first in).
Still cool here in Ontario (its actually snowing today - boo!!) so the show is all indoors. They have 3 indoor arenas that are all attached and the main show one is nice and bright and is 100 x 250’, so nice and big. Nice bright indoor stalls as well 
We will bring out our big LQ trailer and hope the weather will co operate! Its been in storage since November of last year so it will be its first trip this year.
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I’m in Ontario too - but pretty far south so no snow for us right now.
Good luck at your show! Sounds like an awesome venue for a field trip. 18” is my goal for this year. We did cross rails last year and my very non-horsey husband teased me that I was “going to steal all the ribbons from the children”. Jokes on him - they kicked my butt!
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Ha ha! Kids always kick my ass as well! They are gutsy and great little riders so I have no problems with “handing” my ribbons over
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I love seeing updates in this thread, what a lovely pony and you are so clearly doing your best to do right by him. As a fellow adult ammie contesting the mighty sub 2’6 heights, good luck beating those danged kids 
At least they look so cute with their ribbons!
My old lease horse is the spookiest thing I ever sat on, but he never EVER spooked at a jump. Unfortunately I think some of them are just like that…
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I also aspire to keep it 3’ and below. I’m very happy with 2’6" - 2’9" but would love to perhaps try 3’ one day in the future. We shall see though. I’m happy toting around at 18" on greenies any day and love watching kids on their ponies.
We actually jumped our very first boxes yesterday with pretty much no batting of the eye - but the corner we have to ride into after the jump, look, spook and turn lol! At least we got one nice change out of it ha ha! But 0 hesitation or look at the “brick” boxes with flowers…
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