Winter doldrums

The rain we have been having this year has been unreal. It just doesn't stop. The few (four maybe??) Actually sunny days we have had in the last five weeks have been amazing. There is something about the sunshine that just makes you feel good. It's nearly July, so the season starts in 11 weeks which is actually not a lot of time. Not that I ever make the first show of the year anyway, due to the fact we are calving.

This year I'm trying to have everything in work and ticking over before the cows start calving, because calving is a desperately busy, soul destroying, exhausting time of year. I'm going to have to work really hard, to school Kate and Rascal up to what I want, to get Connie super fit and to start re-habbing Bill and hopefully getting Bill ready to compete at a few things. I don't know how long she will take though. Her leg is really healing amazing. I hope to start working with her again in a couple more weeks.

I really want to Amateur classes this year with Kate and hopefully Connie as well. Connie is old enough now that I can push her more, she knows her job, but I really have to get her incredibly fit. Connie needs to be hunting fit otherwise she runs out of steam. One thing about hunting was over the fences, Connie always felt good, giving me big round jumps over everything but then at the jumping at Tielcey the other day, she felt really average. Maybe she isn't a showjumper? Though she does seem to enjoy it. I'm still waiting for her new saddle and I'm keen to see what sort of a difference that makes.

Rascal is as always a difficult child. She is capable of such beautiful work and her flatwork is pretty solid, but my goodness she is a button pusher. Mostly, because she is a bit spooky and spooky horses drive me nuts, but at the same time spooky horses tend to be careful jumpers so I need to get used to spooky horses. I hate that little jolty spook that makes you feel like you have been zapped with an electric shock. Yesterday a pig trotted up to the fence and stood there looking at us unmoving and she was completely unhinged by it. Still, she is mostly good and with the hard work I have been putting in she is really starting to get back the beautiful canter she had when I first brought her, before she got injured a couple of years ago.

Kate, I really need to work on her flatwork because she just doesn't know it, but I also need to jump her enough so we get confident in each other. It's so much easier in the Prestige than it was because my leg is a lot more secure and I feel like I'm sitting into her more than perching on top of her like I was in the Pessoa. I'm going to have to set some more specific goals soon.Hopefully, it wont be too long until we have another clinic.