Happy Saturday!

Just got home from our little schooling CT and although I am exhausted and have a huge headache, I am so happy with how things went today! Pop was so good! I think I feel pretty ready for our first Training HT next weekend. Our dressage warm up was much more spot on today, as far as timing goes, and yet (almost as if to say HA!) the same issue started happening right before we went in the ring. I opted at that point to just post through my test…as fantastic as it feels to sit his beautiful swinging trot when I have it, if I try to sit when he’s leaning on my hands and not going forward it just makes him ten times worse. So..I posted, and carried a whip, and tried to keep riding, riding, riding. Man, every single time I trot into the ring I am like “Oh shoot…this is a lot smaller than I remember.” Everything comes up so fast. Mentally, I tried to be on top of each movement and try to ride every stride, but it still felt rushed to me, and I could feel him hanging on my right rein and put his haunches right…and wasn’t having much success correcting it. An intelligent me would have to remembered to use my outside rein to straighten him a bit, and to encourage more LEFT bend tracking left (oh yeah…you’re not supposed to counterbend to the right IN THE RING….just at home to help you with the haunches. Silly.) But the real me did not, and so even though I felt like his forward button was much improved and our accuracy was better, we got several comments about me using too much right rein (let go, dummy). Alas…our score was much improved from our last test (last test was a 36)…a 25.5! Which, strangely enough, was only putting us in 5th place, but alas.
Our stadium was delayed about 45 minutes so by the time we needed to start warming up, my darling boots had officially cut off the circulation to the foot I broke last summer and when we started jumping I just couldn’t make my leg work. I would generally panic at that moment but I’m learning to trust that this horse is super careful and super game, and I’m not going to die or crash, and everything will be okay. So I headed on in. This was the result:

Comments are welcome. It felt super. He was dead on, he tried his guts out, and it was a BIG training course. Everyone commented that it was bigger than 3’3”…I don’t know if that was true but it did ride a little tougher than the past two courses we’ve done. Nevertheless, we did it! I am so elated. GOOD BOY!
On another note, BooBoo had his (drum roll please) FIRST RIDE BACK today. He was super. A little weak on that right stifle but that’s to be expected, and he was patient and willing and perfect. Video evidence of the perfection:





Thanks for reading…looking forward to your comments! Have a super rest of your Saturday!