The way to heaven is on horseback

Well its time for an update on everything that has been going on in my world.  First of being my loan with tubby, that is no longer happening unfortunately things were starting to get too complicated and after the fall that Elaine had with him at that point he was not sound. And no one could guarentee when he was going to be sound and we decided that there was no point starting the loan on wrong footing so unfortunately that did not happen. However I have come up with a new plan of things that I want to do I am currently saving up for a foal while a lot of people might not think that this is the worlds best idea because of the fact that it is my first ever horse however I feel that with the support and knowledge I have surrounding me that this is something that I would be able to do. Feel free to let Me know your thoughts. Another thing you have all missed is the fact that I am having problems with my stomach again at the minute. For the last few weeks I have been being sick all...

It's been a while since I have posted guys but things have been pretty hectic here. Jack is now home again and I think it's taking him a bit longer to settle in than he thought that it was going to. But it's good to have him back. Uni is going okay, I've got two of my final prints to do this week and then thats part of one module done. I'm in uni now and we are talking a portraits but as per usual the teacher is wandering off the subject and now talking about something completely different.  On to the horse riding it's going okay, I've done some canter work with Gatsby recently and we did some canter poles which was fun. We did it during my lesson with Elaine but there was a bad end to the lesson. Elaine was riding Tubby and he tripped over a pole and he fell, he ended up landing on top of Elaine's leg. Luckily nothing is broken just lots of ligament damage so she's been told that she needs plenty of rest. I get Tubby on loan starting from this ...

Well today has been a long but eventful day, I have had two really good rides on two fantastic horses. A day full of horses, face planted the floor off a horse and am now aching and ready for bed, but tomorrow I am off to see Jack, then he's home wednesday.  So the first ride of the day was on Vettie, we were working on maintaining consistency in the outline in both walk and trot. It went really well, as long as we kept his pace moving and forward we were fine. Our best work was our trot work, where we maintained a great self carriage. I am so happy with the work that we did. We did lots of walk trot transitions doing just short blasts of trot work. We also did lots of circles but we did a small amount of lateral work at the minute just sticking to doing leg yields.  My second ride of the day was on Tubby (the horse that I am going to part loan) and this is where I face planted the ground. Tubby needs some work with getting on him, he likes to move off. I'd got my foo...

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 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...