Ceriann
Well-Known Member
I’ve owned Red for 18 months now - when I got her my confidence was terrible, my riding ni5 much better. Scared to hack, wouldn’t canter away from home, had trouble mounting away from home (my nerves!) and just didn’t have the skills to get decent work out of her. My mare and I started competing prelim dressage this summer (we’ve done about 6/7 outings) - I’m new to dressage but bitten by the bug! This week I realise how far we’ve come - Monday we hacked through cows, a Hercules low fly over and survived, Tuesday we “got†counter canter at home (Im trying to get to a novice test attempt soon) and yesterday we managed a decent score at prelim at a BD event (we were unaffiliated) in fairly exciting winds. My little Red is such a dude. As we were first out at our test I didn’t quite appreciate how well she dealt with the weather until I watched the later tests with some neddies putting in some quite spectacular spooks! Good horse (I literally worship her) good instructor (I’m pretty close to worshipping her too) and being prepared to say “I don’t know how to do this†or “how do I get this better†and “I’m nervous about this†really have made riding enjoyable again. So much still to work on (as my test sheet shows) - I still have to tell myself to hack, I get really nervous at tests and I still haven’t managed to jump but even if we don’t I’m happy.