dear Lucy, those are barrels. PS: they don't bite.

I had another great ride on Lulu, including the introduction of The Blue Barrels.

You see, they've been casually hanging out by the side of the ring since I moved Lucy to this barn. We've walked past them to get to one of the fields we ride in on numerous occasions. She's come so far over fences this summer that I thought to myself today that it would be a perfect time to put the barrels and the jumping together.

Got trot? We do!

I love this photo because I'm smiling!

We warmed up as usual and then hopped over a few "normal" fences. I had set the barrels up on their side, with two poles forming an "x" between them. This way she'd get to look at them but not have to jump the barrels themselves. She went over the x without a hitch.

I asked Kenny to make the poles a vertical, so she'd basically be jumping the same height as the barrels themselves. Again, she went over this without any problems:

I was like, wow this is going incredibly well! So we put the barrels together and this was the result:

"I've never seen those barrels before in my LIFE!" *emergency brake*

Before this progressed into something messy and drawn out, I asked Kenny to put up some guiding poles to help eradicate any thought processes in Lu's mind that didn't equal forward and straight. My plan worked perfectly:

We also jumped the 3' vertical a few times. We started with it at 2'6" and she jumped it textbook perfectly:

Then Kenny bumped it up:

"lock and load!"

"wow there, killer!"

After all this, we went out in the field and had a nice little hack:

Whatta good girl!