Cantering and jumps....what a day!

It's a windy/rainy day here in Illinois so the boys are just chillin' today and we all are enjoying the day off. My family and I have been outside so much that we are all so tired at night. Scout and I were playing with canter transitions two days ago and that is going really well (I'm still sore actually! so this will build up my muscles!) We trot along the south line of the pasture and we transition from walk to trot, to fast, pony trot, to walk, stop back-up. So after he was comfortable doing some of those we cantered along for a while. Scout tends to want to head towards the barn so I would bend to a stop and then trot back to the line and try again. So yesterday Scout got confident and we cantered along the line and then came back into a trot. I was so proud of him because he listened to me and didn't want to run off. Freestyle audition here we come! My sister and I both pitched in for a new memory card for our camera. It's an 8 GB so now we can have some absurd amount of data on there (I think it can hold 4000 pictures and 170 min. of video. crazy stuff) We will be sending in our free style auditions very soon. I can't wait!!

Oh, and another thing Scout and I are working on are jumps. So what I've been doing is setting up 3 barrels laying down (with space in between them) then having a barrel upright on the other side. So when Scout jumps it, he runs right to the barrel to get a treat. It took a while, and we'll continue when the weather turns nice again, but he jumped the barrels twice and the black tube once! I was so pleased! here is how the barrels where set up: