The way to heaven is on horseback

I had another good morning at the stables this week it's been a busy week for my this week. So here's what I've been upto.  Monday - Day at my stables, I went up to my stables in the morning and helped out I spent about 3 hours there, then I went home and chilled out for a bit before going back for my jumping lesson. It was so good we did this really cool dog leg exercise that I have never done before and thought that I was going to really struggle with, to start with I wasn't being decisive enough. However once I decided that I wanted to do it, it went really well. We jumped small jumps all in canter though and landing on the right lead for the canter after the jump. It felt really nice and I was so happy with the work we did. Unfortunately it was dark so there is no videos' of this. It was then time for pony club, where we were riding again and I got to ride Vettie for 30 minutes. As you guys will know I've rode Vettie lots last winter and the beginning o...

Well it's been a long and tiring few days but I have had a good couple of rides too. I rode Gatsby on Sunday and we worked on the Canter. We did this really cool exercise that was really tiring but it was so much fun to do. We warmed up briefly (as Gatsby had already been rode and I was feeling fairly well stretched and warmed up). I got Gatsby working nicely but very very forward in the walk and trot then we moved on to canter the idea was that we did two 20m circles with three poles at three points of the circle. At the fourth point and over 'x' there was a box. The idea was that we would canter over the poles on the 20m circle at 'a' when we got to the box we would come back to trot or walk, and then change the bend picking up the opposite canter lead (because you're going around the circle the opposite way) to go around the circle at 'c'. We were basically doing a canter figure of 8 with a simple change over 'x' building up to doing a flying...

So today I had my half an hour private lesson on Gatsby. Fiona said that I could do some jumping with him and I was really excited. It's been a long time since I've put jumping and enjoyment in the same place. It was nice that it was only half an hour because it meant that I don't get tired easily. We started off doing lots of walk, trot transitions and keeping a nice rhythm.  I then put my stirrups up and did some work going over the poles. When we started jumping we started off with a reasonable sized cross. Gatsby and I had a really nice rhythm so we quickly moved it up to a straight across. We were starting coming up to the jump in trot but Gatsby got excitable and we ended up going over it in canter once two. Fiona said I looked more confident and a lot stronger in my position which was really nice to here. We went over the jump a couple more times all though this time we trotted up to the jump,went over it then cantered up to the long side. Then before we went up...