The way to heaven is on horseback

This has literally been me today, my mum did Magic this morning as she does him every morning when I have a riding lesson (So really just saturdays). My riding lessons have also now moved to 10am instead of being in the middle of the day. My ribs were killing me and I hadn't really been sleeping very well but I knew that I just needed to get on with it as the old saying goes no pain, no gain. I went up for my lesson with Magic and it was really really good. I enjoyed riding him. We did quite a bit of canter work and Fiona says that my dressage level is in between intermediate and medium. I could ride a prelim test with ease and she thinks that I will slowly be moving up. We did lots of work on getting Gatsby to actually work in a canter in the outline, which hasn't been easy but it was fun. Even though my ribs were killing me because they were in spasm it was a lot easier for me to keep my position in the right place so while I hated the pain it actually worked out really well...

Well I got reminded last night that I don't think I ever posted on here the results from my dressage competition, I didn't manage to place in either of the tests but the good news is that in both of them I was one place of placing. I got 7th in both and even managed to get a '9' score on my first test. My riding was better in the walk trot test because I had a bit of a melt down in the second test because instead of focusing on what I was doing I was stressing about who was judging me however I didn't come last on either of them so I was quite happy. Gatsby was a star that day, I still need to put the videos on youtube but as soon as I have put them up I will post them here and you can let me know what you guys think.  These are just a couple of photographs that were taken at the show, these are my two favourites and the one at the top is even my laptop screensaver, after having done one show I have realised that I would love to do another one. But first I wa...

Today was the first ride of the year and it was an eventful ride, it wasn't the best riding that we have ever done but it was good enough for me to know what I need to work on before my competition in march.  We started up warming up, Fiona said that I needed to figure out what the optimal warm up time for both Gatsby and I is, for us this is no more than 20 minutes, probably 10 minutes in walk/trot stretching,  followed by 5 minutes to completely stretch out at a walk and relax, then another 5 minutes starting to collect him and add a couple of little bits of canter in! I've got to remember that this is mine and Gatsby's first trip out together so we might not win but we can only do the best that we can do. Also that I am not to put myself under extra pressure just because this competition is at Broomfield, yes there are going to be people there that want to see what Gatsby is like now but I am not to let that bother me.  stretching and Gatsby doing his giraffe...

The title of this post says it all for me, for those of you that have been following my blog for a while you will know that when I first started riding Gatsby at West Hallam Riding Centre (29th September 2012) I was introduced in to the idea of riding in an outline, ever since then I have been trying to get the feel and some weeks I get it then I could go 2/3 weeks and not get it at all and feel really frustrated. Well the past four lessons that I have had I have been riding Gatsby in an outline the whole time, some of our transitions we loose it a little bit, but the majority of it we are in an outline in walk, trot and we are even starting to get it really well in canter. We have even started to get it in our jump lessons which before we never really bothered to do, we were more focused on getting over the jumps, now not only are we jumping but we are trying to get an outline in-between the jumps.  We started warming up long and low, normally I just stretch him out in the ...

Hiya Guys,  well my hand is no longer in a cast! I went in to hospital on Wednesday to find out whether it was definitely broken or not. I had to get two opinions on it the first doctor wanted to tell me that it wasn't swollen (which it clearly was) and that it was perfectly fine. I wasn't happy with this because I knew that something wasn't right. The second doctor told me that it was a damaged ligament that was catching on my joints and that was what was causing the pain. So he gave me an injection in to my hand and told me that it would start working in three days. Todays the first day that my hand hasn't been as bad, and has been more managable.  Yesterday I got to ride Gatsby for the first time in two weeks and I loved it! It's some of the best work that we have done in a long time and I loved it.  We had a bit of an arguement to start with because Gatsby didn't want to work in an outline so he tried every way possible to get out of working in an o...