It doesn't rain it pours.

I got to see Gatsby today and my uncle got to meet Gatsby. Today was my weekly lesson. When we got there it looked like the sun was going to come out, it had been raining earlier but there were blue skies and even a bit of sunshine. I groomed Gatsby and tacked him up and even got to get on him early. When I got on him he initially seemed to be quite lazy which we were expecting as he is now turned out at night. We spent some time warming up getting both Gatsby and me to stretch and loosen up. After the week I have had it felt so good to be back in the saddle. We spent quite a long time walking doing transitions. We then tried doing turn on the forehand and it went so well. For those of you that have been reading my blog for a while you will know that I tried doing this before but Gatsby kept backing up and me so we never successfully managed it. Well we did today he was great. Going to the right he was a bit stiffer to start with her just kept backing up. However when over exaggerating the movements he really got the idea of what I wanted to do. 

We then moved on to the trot work. To start with he was lazy, so I decided that I would carry my crop well the minute I held it we had a forward Gatsby he was willing to move and I don't think that I actually needed to use it. We did several transitions and then moved on to doing trotting poles he really picked up his feet and I was surprised to see how much of an improvement there was with both in me and Gatsby. He was forward and flowing. After we had dome this for a while we moved on to doing some canter work to start with it was awful. And at the same time a shower started. I was losing the front end and because of this I was losing the canter. When I held my hands just a little bit higher I got a nice smooth canter from Gatsby he listened to my leg and when he thought about breaking the canter I was persistent and kept my leg on him and he kept going. My riding teacher then decided that we would do some walk trot transitions. To start with I just couldn't quite get it however I then had a light bulb moment and I managed one then another, then another. However we had to call an end to our lesson. It was chucking it down, the rain was ice cold, there were Gail force winds it was just horrible. So I jumped off and fiona, Gatsby and I ran to his stable and hid in it we untacked him quickly and put him a fleece cooler on the poor guy was shivering so much I felt so sorry for him. I gave him big cuddles and we legged it to the tack room we all waited for the rain to stop a bit and then ran and got in my car. I drove back and the roads were flooding so I had to be really careful but we were soon back and warm in the house. 

This afternoon I went for a drive I put some petrol in my car, and went for a drive we didn't go too far as I was still pretty cold and tired but it was enough to get me going on new roads and up and down hills. We then had something to eat and my mum helped me to dye my hair. With the ball being at the end of next week I've re-dyed my hair purple again. We decided to do it a week before to give the dye time to settle and give me enough time to get any excess dye out of my hair. Then on Friday Katie is going to curl my hair and Evie is going to do my make up. I can't believe how quickly this is going. 

On Monday I have my first ponyclub meeting and I can not wait!! 

Until next time 

A Girl With A Dream