Well I've not got around to posting in a while as I've been quite busy but wanted to write about a couple of good rides I've had recently and tomorrow I will post Videos of one of my rides. On Saturday I got to ride Gatsby for the first time in a while, I was looking forward to it as it meant that I could work on some different things. We did some trot work and canter work. We did an exercise that we haven't done in a while where you trot over three trotting poles then ask for the canter as soon as you're over the poles and do a 20m circle. This is an exercise that I've always loved doing. We then moved on to doing some related distance canter work. We had two trot poles with three or four canter strides in between them the idea was we would go over it still being a dressage rider and alternate the type of stride meaning we would either extend it or collect it, altering the amount of strides. I really enjoyed doing this but found that I was getting quite tired quickly so we ended the lesson on the best ride that I've ever had out of Gatsby. We spent a good 10 minutes working in an outline, it's the best outline I've ever got it was so nice and floaty and everything fell in to place. We also talked about the idea of me competing Gatsby/Vettie this year.
Last night I got to ride Vettie for 40 minutes, I was really looking forward to it. From the very beginning I was including bending, circles and lots of lateral work. I was able to pick him up in to an outline really quickly and while it wasn't the easiest thing to do I did get a small amount of trot work in an outline. Fiona used me as an example of how to do certain things for the two other girls in my lesson. I really enjoyed riding I got some nice shoulder in work and leg yields, eventually I would like to try doing half pass with him. Fiona showed us some of the work that she does with him and then we picked a horse to put to bed at pony club. I was the last one to get a name and ended up getting Chloe who is a new horse. I saw her arrive on Saturday and she is lovely, she seems really sweet natured, she's good to groom, tack rugs on and off and put new rugs on. She was just lovely to work with and I look forward to spending more time with her in the future. She's one of the few mares that I get on with, I've always been a gelding fan but this little mare has got me intrigued.
While I was at Pony club I also got to help Kelly give Rascal his antibiotics. This is something that I've never done before and I found it interesting that I had got the opportunity to do it. I had to help Kelly hold his neck up while we got a syringe full of medicine for him to take.
Until Next Time
A Girl With A Dream
p.s. Videos to come
Welcome back!
ReplyDelete