I cheated...

Since Stinker was just walking the dressage judge took pity on me and let me ride her new mare!!!  This is a mare she imported this summer/fall from Europe and is absolutely amazing.  I couldn't believe it when she offered to let me ride Danae (I am not sure on the spelling but it is a play on Danish, so I am rolling with that).  Anyway, here is the whole video.  Well I did cheat and cut off the part where I was struggling to get her to walk at the beginning.  She wasn't convinced she had to go back to work, and I started laughing and was pretty worthless.

So a little about Danae.  She is 6 years old Danish Warmblood that was bred for dressage.  Here is a link to her pedigree.  She is big (17.3 I think), so big my legs don't hang past her belly.  This is pretty unusual for me and I don't think my hips could take riding that daily.  I am quite fond of my narrow little man in that respect.  She is absolutely beautiful.  The pictures I have don't do her justice.  She doesn't like clippers and woke up half way through her clip job.  Sara is waiting for the vet to bring more sleepy juice to finish her, I swear she doesn't leave her horses like this normally. :)

It was so much fun to ride her.  She has buttons everywhere and it has been awhile since I have ridden a horse that isn't a green bean.  Sorry Pongo and Stinker, but buttons are fun!  Anyway, at one point Sara listed off all the things Danae has buttons for, and I haven't ridden the majority of them, so I stuck with the ones I have ridden.  We did walk, trot, canter, and a couple of leg yields.

The canter surprised me the most.  Since she is so big, I was expecting a heavier canter.  Danae is light as a feather in the canter.  Our canter to the left is much better than to the right.  I didn't have her connected quite right and she was coming into heat and was stiffer to the right, so all of that made it a little funky.  I do think I did a decent job of getting her back together.