Autumn has been taking on board the dressage training and I finally dropped my stirrups a few holes! It gave me a much better position in the saddle but wow did my thighs hurt after, I haven’t ridden with stirrups that long in years! We have been practising one of the intro tests to get our skills up and know it quite well now, so aiming to have a go at the other one we have so there’s a bit more variety in the schooling, then hopefully in a month or two we can enter our first competition! I did let her have a break from all the flat work though and we did have a jumping session, which she loved, I put one on the fences up to about 80cm just to see what she would do and she jumped it well, I’m still not 100% sure she’s able to do an 80 course out anymore but we will see as we get towards Spring and the temperature improves plus I will be keeping her on her new senior balancer.
Aria has been good when schooling, listening a lot more and less mad minutes of galloping and leaping around, which is positive. She is however becoming a bit bolshy when being brought in from the field – she sees to have lost her awareness of where she plants her legs and body, causing a few squished moments for me! It even ended up with both her and me getting zapped one evening when she tried to get pushy through the electric gate – not pleasant. An inhand ground work session will be in order for the next week I think!
We have had a great start to 2019 and I’m really looking forward to getting our training underway and moving up the heights, the prospect of a different discipline is also exciting, although I’m not sure how good we will be at it but we will give it a go! I’m starting to plan some of the shows for the next few months and hope to get Aria out to an in hand one too so she can get some more experience!
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Once again I threw Arlo in at the deep end, affiliating him purely for the Arena UK second round show, and once again he pulled it out the bag. How lucky am I to have such a wonderful little horse? We haven’t really competed this year. I don’t really compete over the winter, and also my horsebox was away for repairs up until the beginning of June, so I had no transport even if I’d wanted to.
With the dry ground we don’t seem to be having much luck with shoes, as little madam managed to pull both her front shoes off within 12 hours the other day! We entered the arena with two shoes on for a schooling session and left it with one missing (took about an hour to find it). Then that afternoon, as I went to put some hoof ointment on, I looked down and had to double take, thinking I was looking at the wrong hoof. But, no, the other shoe was missing too.
After having a long wait and some lunch at the onsite café, it was time to get ready for the Joan Wolfe Overall Supreme Shetland Pony Championship. I got changed out of my usual showing outfit into black trousers and a maroon top with white spots, as you are expected to be a bit more “bling” in the evening.
We were all set to go for our next outing, and were super excited. That was until I heard the dreaded clunk of a loose shoe! I checked it over, praying it wasn’t too loose, but, nope, it was going to need a refit.