Looking Forward not Behind

Lake Taupo in the center of the North island

Ah I promise an interesting guest post in the next couple of days when I force my sister to post of her time working in a showjumping yard in NZ. She has come back a far stronger and more confident rider, and she will have Rascal going amazing in no time. They had there first canter today and she came in saying " her canter is really weird kind of roundy, I didn't know whether to sit or two point" and I was like yea that's her bucking lol. There is no malice in Rascal.

Kate had her teeth done. Man she is a good horse, she rolled her eyes a bit but basically never moved. She had a few points but nothing serious which is good. I had thought they were bad because she was dropping food but she may just be very sensitive to her teeth starting to get sharp. The bad news is that winter is really starting to set in so it will get harder to ride now. Still there is always the farm tracks and the roads, the arena around the corner, the indoor 20 mins up the road, the beach and hour and a half away, and maybe just maybe some winter shows. I just hate the surface there and I'm really anti jumping on a bad surface. The coming season I'm planning to miss the show an hour from home where the ground is really hard and travel up to the one 7 hours away. Though my BF lives there also so it's a double plus. Shame it's not until December.

The other big plan I have in the works is to travel to Nationals in the South Island in February just for something different. now I don't know if it's true, but I'm told by reliable sources that the tracks are both smaller and softer down there, so that could be nice. It's funny you know, I have always pretty nice horses, and been relatively successful but I have never paid a lot of money for a horse that's already going. I have mostly trained my own. It's going to be weird competing on a horse that people on the circuit know. I could change her name I guess, she really is your generic brown TB mare. But that costs fifty bucks, and I'm really really frugal now I earn my own money.

Mum has said I can't turn Bill out until I can canter, ride around in the open and go for a hack so I guess I have a fair amount of work to do with her. One horse over the winter in work, is going to be pretty sweet. At some stages last winter I was working three and that was not easy at all. It all feels pretty positive at the moment and I have to say, it hasn't been like that for a while and it feels really good.

Bill - Ride Eight

So now I only need Mum to hold the Bill while I get on. And to help enforce my go aids. I'm a little reluctant to get after Bill about it at this point, but I'm really going to have to soon. The problem is she will come back at you, she is a tough little mare. She is also pretty slow to forget and I can't afford to pick a battle I can't win, so at this point I'm sort of just feeling her out. At least she is very relaxed about everything.



So I'm cruising around my ring, trotting by myself, with Mum on the ground acting to back up my aid for trot. Though I can hit her lightly with an open hand behind the saddle and she will go from that also. so by the end of this ride I was basically doing it all without ground assistance. She is still looking to stop, but I think she will just get better and better and more comfortable. When I remember how hard it was to get a single trot stride out of Connie, compared to what she is like now, I'm pretty confident I will get there.



Now of course we have a new issue. The more I do, the closer I get to having to leave my little security round pen and start facing the outside world, and I'm so not as brave as I used to be. So the closer I get to that, the more my enthusiasm wanes. I know that if I just get out there and go forward it wont be too much of an issue, but both Mum and my roundpen are my security blankets. I guess next time I need to make a concentrated effort even to just walk around outside the pen. Oh man I have a video of the trotting that I haven't uploaded yet but will, and my hands are abysmal. Blerk. Just moving way to much, it's horrendous. Not a good way to develop a young horse who trusts the contact. So I definitely need to work on that. She wants to work in the right shape which is nice, but she is still very downhill, so I suspect she is going to get a wee bit bigger. Sorry the last picture is sideways, but if you just kink your head over it will be the right way up. She is just having a piece of apple. Seriously though, what the hell is up with her sideways ears? She has the most mobile ears I have ever seen and this sideways donkey flop is pretty unusual.

A Brand New Start

Well here we are. I have just deleted a blog I have had for over 18 months. I didn't even think I liked the stupid thing until I decided to delete. I'm not very coputer literate and I couldn't find a solution. Frankly, I would hate to be the cause of someone getting a computer infected with malware or viruses because of my silly little blog. I'm gutted people are even using blogs to target peoples computers. there really is no peace. A big thank you to Kate who pointed out the problem.

Still it isn't a bad time to restart, everything is sort of new, Bill is in work, Fred is gone and I have Kate, and my sister has just returned from Ireland full of enthusiasum and new ideas. Poor old Rascal (who is now Kims) has been hit by something of a kiwi/irish tornado. I hope to rewrite some of may older favourite posts, such as the couple I wrote about jumping technique, the function of boots and other such things.

Now I have to go out and spread word of my new blog I guess. I hope to reach all of the people whom have followed my blog, i had gotten up to a decent readership. Sigh. No big I guess onward and upward.