playing the swapping game

This morning I woke up just in time to go for my riding lesson, when I got there I got to work on grooming Gatsby and I was amazed to see how shiny he was. He looked so clean. When I went to tacking him up we decided that we were going to make a few changes. First of all we took away his martingale we might use it when jumping him but for now when doing flat work we aren't going to use it. We then changed the bit, I can't remember what bit he had got in before, I think it was a gag. But then we put him in a snaffle with a lozenge joint.

As soon as I got on him the difference was amazing. He was forward and responsive and I was still managing to almost get him in an outline so I was happy with the work that we were doing. As soon as I asked him to warm up and stretched he dropped straight in to working long and low and it felt great. He was really swinging in the walk and it felt so nice to not constantly be putting my leg on to get him more active. We all noticed the difference straight away. When I picked up the contact I found that I was almost getting him in an outline straight away but I wasn't pushing it quite enough. I was still moving my hands to much so was blocking him from going in to an outline, but we are getting there! We then moved on to the trot and he was so much more forward than he has been, I was amazed by it I only needed the slightest bit of leg and I could feel him moving instantly better and that he was actually putting his back end underneath him.

When it got to half way through we played the swapping game. I got off Gatsby and Jaimieleigh got off Rascal and we switched horses. Even though there isn't much difference height wise inbetween Gatsby and Rascal, Rascal does feel a lot lower to the ground and his saddle makes me ache more because every muscle is where it's supposed to be. I didn't do to much trot work as I was starting to really ache but I worked on doing shoulder in and leg-yield with Rascal it amazed me how easily I was finding the right buttons to press to get him to do what I wanted him to do. He really helps me to understand what I need to do on Gatsby, even if it means on Gatsby that I need to over exaggerate the movement so that it's clearer and understands him more. When we'd finished we cooled the horses down and let them stretch out and we talked about the differences in the two horses. We also came to the conclusion that Gatsby would be so much better if he had a saddle that was like Rascals.

I've got some pictures but I haven't put them on my laptop yet so I will post them tomorrow.

Until Next Time

A Girl With A Dream

CON ARTIST - NICKI WILLIAMS - BEWARE

Okay so this post has taken me a while to post for several reasons but the main one being just how angry this woman has made me. For those of you that have been following my blog for a long while you will know that back around October of 2016, I was introduced to a woman called Nicki Williams, she was a friend of a friend that was supposed to be opening a centre for rehoming and rescuing animals, but also for horses working with soldiers that has PTSD. We hit it off straight away and came what I thought to be good friends. However warning bells should have probably rang sooner. By January or February of last year the horses that I had agreed to look after (that she had got on loan) Bella and Arthur, she was being threatened that she would have them taken off her by the control of horses act, because she hadn't been paying the rent for the field. Although Nicki reassured me that she had done, she even showed my 'payments' that had been made to Angie. I ended up getti...

Olympics - good bad or both?

In the Beijing Olympics in 2008 the horses used in the pentathlon were said to cause farcical scenes with fall after fall after fall. This was said to be the fault of the horses that were either hired or loaned to the competitors. It was not blamed to be rider error or a combination of both rider error and horse error, it was labelled as being the horses fault or this is what it said in ' Horse and Hound Magazine'. This horse was said to have been to spooky and sharp, but is it not a combination of rider's aids and rider error AS WELL as the horse being spooky. Can we really just blame it on the horse, when we are the ones that tell the horse what to do, by no means am i saying it was 'just the riders fault' couldn't it have been a combination of both?. For the London 2012 Olympics it was said that a total of two years if no longer was spent attempting to find the right horse for the right competitor. They made sure that the horse was at the right l...

Picture time Part one

Hiya Guys, I can't say that I've really done much today other than finding myself sleeping lots. After the past week being quite stressful as well as the few weeks before leading up to the court date it's safe to say I've hit my barrier where all I really want to do is sleep. The problem is though that I am sleeping during the day and then it gets to 11pm roughly and I find myself wide awake and on my laptop looking for something to do that is going to make me feel sleepy. I've tried reading a book and I start to feel really sleepy but then the minute that I turn the light off and put the book down, bang, I'm wide awake again. As I've not really done a lot I thought that I would take this opportunity to post some pictures up from the last time that I jumped Gatsby (also the first time I fell off him). Most of these pictures were taken by the boyfriend but some were also taken by my amazing mum. So here you go guys. :) Really do love this pic...

The way to heaven is on horseback

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