Goldrush yesterday

What can I say? I love this pony so much.  He's an absolute sweetheart, he learns fast, and tries his heart out for me. And the fact that I've done all the training and work with him since he came out of the wild just makes it that much more rewarding.

Yesterday he was a superstar. I didn't even have to tie him up to groom and tack him up. He just stood there like a lamb the whole time. 

It's back to the time of year again where they are all losing there winter coats and the amount of hair coming off them is unbelievable. So he got a really long grooming today. 

As for ridden work well we started off with circles and random halts followed by backing up. I don't really need rein contact with him because he moves so well off just my seat and legs. 

Then I started to teach him lateral (sideways)  movements and moving away from my leg. Starting at the halt I asked with my leg, till he moved sideways. After a few attempts at avoiding it by backing up he clicked on and after not a lot of time I had him stepping over both ways. It's almost like you can hear and see his brain thinking when I'm teaching him new things, and he picks up on it so quickly. 

After that I let him open up and have his first gallop!!  I get such a good feeling from this pony!!!!  

Then lastly i started working on teaching him a running vault. For those of you who don't know what a running vault is I'll post a photo. 

Running vault on Spud 

Basically in mounted games in some games you have to get on your pony as fast as you can do what better way to do it than vault on while your pony gallops besides you.

Since Goldrush has never done this before we only worked at a trot. I started by teaching him to trot along while I ran besides him, back by the saddle. This confused him a bit and he kept stopping to let me catch up or turning towards me but he got the gist of it and I got a decent vault in. This is a work in progress. 

Very happy with my boy :)

I was planning to ride Sophie as well but shes been quite lame for the last couple of days and I can't find anything wrong myself. I suspect it's an abcsses I can't find just yet but I'll get her looked at and poultice her hoof.