good couple of rides but dog problems

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 change eventually. It took me a while to get the hang of changing the bend so that we would pick up the correct lead after but I was really happy with the work that we ended up doing. Video's to follow.

Today (Monday 22nd September 2014) I did a 30 minute jumping lesson as now as well as my weekly saturday riding lesson I'm going to be having a fortnightly 30 minute lesson on a monday. We worked on getting Gatsby to have a nice forward trot from the beginning, making sure that he was listening and that he was off my leg. We started off with a simple cross rail jump. Each time I went over it it would get slightly bigger. We did the cross jump at 'B' I then had to ride straight because at 'H' and 'K' was a single pole that I then had to ride over. I could chose to either do this in the trot or canter and I could only walk in-between these two poles. I also had to do the lap around the school multiple times before having a break the idea of this was to build up my stamina and keep Gatsby and I going for long. We did this route as a cross jump for a while before we put it up to a small vertical and omg it felt amazing! For once when it comes to jumping I was the 'pilot' as Fiona would put it. I rode him to and at the Fences meaning that we would get a good jump and it went really well. I loved what we did and am so happy with the work that we did. I just wish that we had some videos but we will do soon! 

Now on to the bad news. Angel (my shih tzu, well she's actually my mums hasn't been very well). Yesterday my dad text my mum when we were out to say that Angel didn't seem herself which she wasn't! She was very hot, didn't want to walk very far and physically couldn't jump up to where she normally sits. We took her to the vets at lunch time and they checked her temperature and told us it was 41 which is apparently very high for a dog. They told us that they thought she had a uterus infection that was building up inside her (at this point they ultra sounded her and it wasn't building up so gave us tablets and sent her home). By last night she was no better, she was getting hotter, a lot sleepier and just generally not herself. We took her to the out of hours vets and they wanted to keep her in, this morning they operated on her and removed her womb. She's come home tonight but she's still not eating or drinking much, she's really not with it and still is having problems breathing and just generally doesn't know what's going on. She's got a check up appointment booked tomorrow for 4.20 to see how she is so I'm just hoping that she will feel better by then. 

Until Next Time  

A Girl With A Dream