The way to heaven is on horseback

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...

Well Yesterday I jumped Gatsby it wasn't initially planned put I just needed to do something different and Gatsby and I haven't jumped for a while. We started off warming up and getting him nice and lose. when we moved on to getting ready for jumping we did trotting poles first we started off going over five trotting poles before we moved up to doing 7 trot poles. We tried 6 but Gatsby didn't like 6 he couldn't get his striding quite right.When we moved on to jumping we started off on my better rein which is to the right. We had trot poles going up to the jump and then a X jump. It felt good we managed to jump it really well but then we couldn't manage to get the right canter lead when landing eventually we got it right. Then we jumped to the left now this has always been my worst rein. But we got some good jumps I ride better to the left I just have a mental block on it that I really need to get past and sooner or later I will do it's jus taking a while. We di...

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...

Today has been a really good day. I absolutely loved my ride. It's been a quite a while since I've done any canter work and today after watching one of the other girls lessons I felt the need to do some canter work.  I was back on Gatsby which I really enjoyed. I was looking forward to my ride but at the start I wasn't 100% sure how it was going to go. We spent the first part of the lesson working on the outline. I found that he was dropping a lot easier in to an outline but I think that I was over thinking it a bit to much. I didn't get it 100% but I was happy with where we left it off. I found that he was really locking his neck in place so I was having to be really firm with him to get him to flex.  When we moved on to the canter work Fiona asked me if I was feeling nervous which I said that honestly yes I was. I think in my mind I thought because I hadn't done any canter work in a while I would still be cantering how I used to be which wasn't great ...