After enjoying 4 days of glorious sunshine, we were fooled into believing Spring was springing and schooling at home was going well. Thanks to a record check, I had discovered it had been 7 months since our last dressage test. It is so scary how time flies (not sure I was even having fun?!) This discovery had a two-fold effect, it made me a little nervous as to what would happen on the day having not been out for so long; it also gave me a little bit of courage to say this is a training exercise... let's just do it! Obviously the Spring like weather came to an immediate end on the day of the show, it rained consistently all day! I am so grateful to have a chestnut now after so many years of full body bathing a grey, 2 legs and we're done now.
I am very fortunate to have been given some travel bags from Equine Storage Solutions, as part of my Brand Ambassador deal with Pony and Pup Photography. They are fully personalised with all our logos and perfect for keeping all your show stuff clean and dry. You can see how happy I am with mine 😁 get yours here
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I digress. I travelled alone to Cobham Manor, having arranged to meet a friend and my OH there. I got Socks ready and was clock watching, hoping some help would arrive to get me to the warm up! Just as I was getting on board by the lorry, Tony appeared. Socks walked in front of him halfway through the car park, where I sent him back for the boot bag I had forgotten. Socks carried on through to the warm up alone... to anyone who knows our journey so far, this is MAJOR progress. She warmed up very sensibly despite a rather exuberant horse basically galloping laps of the soggy warm up arena, and into our first test we went. Again, straight in; no napping, spooking or reversing!! Socks is still only rising 5, she is green and needs to develop strength in her frame and consistency. She trusted me to perform the test, but lacked the confidence to take the rein forward and tension in the walk affected our scores. She also struck off wrong lead on the left rein in both tests, but not at all in the warm up. It is all such a learning curve with youngsters, I like to analyse my score sheet afterwards for feedback on specific areas. If I took the left canter transitions and walk parts out of the test, the scores went from 62% to 66%. That gives me a lot more hope. It is easy to look at the overall score and feel rubbish, but dig deeper and you can often feel better.
Despite the rain, I was thrilled for Kate from Pony and Pup to turn up with her camera. She took some super photos of us, some of my favourites here. Don't forget you guys can get 10% discount from her, just by quoting my name.
https://www.facebook.com/ponypupphoto/
5 days later we were back on the road, off to Eaglesfield this time for a lesson with Janine Lamy. We had booked a private half hour session to see what Socks was like out of the group situation. Unfortunately this didn't quite pull off, as there was a riding lesson taking part in the other half of the arena; so that was a perfect excuse to nap to that end of the school. This really was a 2 forward/1 back day as got some really positive jumping done, but so much frustration with the napping in between. I still came away positive, as Janine fills me with confidence that she will come right and not to let anyone tell me otherwise. As far as I know people aren't saying I can't do it... well at least not to my face! 😉
So all systems go ready for jump clinic at Four Elms and getting some serious groundwork done at home.... but SNOW. And the world ceases to turn. Ponies on house arrest for 7 days, except for a run in the school twice a day. Clinic cancelled, no riding at all. Back to miserable faces. I managed to set some super snaps of them in the snow, but now thank goodness it has gone and we can get back to some form of normality!
You never cease to amaze me karla how you see a positive side to every situation and how articulate you are with your progress reports. Thank goodness the snow has gone so you can carry on xx
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