The way to heaven is on horseback

 So I realised that it has been a while since I updated this blog so thought out was time to bring it back to life. Magic is now 6  and the b dream finally came true. Since I last posted we have moved yards and magic is now on a lovely yard, it's a working farm with lots of character and a family atmosphere. Magic is coming on in leaps and bounds me as you gu us have been on this journey with me from the start I decided that it was time to bring you guys back along for the journey.  Magic got backed over a year ago now and since then we have entered our first online competition, we have competed at our first ever competition at a venue and we've done our first ever endurance ride. We have changed coaches, made friends and lost friends but most importantly we've learnt together and come a really long way.  So let's talk about our most recent adventures, the first one being his first ever endurance ride. We are so lucky to live within hacking distance of a endurance ri...

Hi everyone, Sorry for the lack of posting over the Christmas period, I thought that I would have some time off ready to hit the new year with posts every date and plenty of magic updates. When I first started writing this blog it was a journey to getting my own horse, a journey through my riding, and a journey to where I would end up in life. Now part of that journey has been completed, I have my very own horse, the only real dream that I have had since a young age has come true, and I'm not going to stop there. So as life is a journey I've decided that the best thing to do is keep writing my blog. So what's to come in this journey? Me completing my BHS stages and exams, both in riding, teaching, care and lunging. I aim to get my own stables and yard, that will primarily be a livery yard but will also be a rescuing and rehoming centre for animals that really need help, while it will mainly be horses, I'd like to think that I could include other animals too. Making...

Hiya Everyone,  Well it's been a while since I post but things have been really hectic, between Uni and Riding there is not much time for anything else. So first of all I thought I would tell you all about riding Gatsby and a special surprise ;).  Well i started off my lesson riding my all time favourite Gatsby, we decided that we were going to work on riding without stirrups as this is something that I was doing a lot of but haven't done in a while and seen as I'm feeling a lot more confident I decided that it was time to do it again and I have video's for you all :). We warmed up in walk and trot, doing small amounts of leg yield and working on keeping both Gatsby and I straight. The outline came a lot easier this time, and we managed to get it in walk and trot and best of all we were maintaining it through transitions and for the majority of the hour. (See the video's below),  Then after riding Gatsby I got a ride on the lovely hors...

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 ...

So today I got a nice surprise when I got to my stables it turned out I would be having a change of horse for the lesson this week and I was privileged enough to be able to ride Vettie. For those of you that don't know Vettie is Fiona's horse that she competes to a really high level. The minute I sat on him I found that I did really like him, he made me feel confident and he didn't make my back hurt. His saddle put me in exactly the right place and as soon as I started moving with him I could feel my hips instinctively swinging with the movement of his body. Steph taught Alice and JaimieLeigh  while Fiona helped me to get used to him. His trot was amazing! He has such a big bouncy stride but I found that I didn't struggle to rise with it, I even got him in a nice outline for quite a while which felt amazing! I really did enjoy riding him and look forward to riding him again one day. We worked on doing some leg yield which went awfully for me but made Vettie drop in to ...