The way to heaven is on horseback

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 ...

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 ...