Lockdown weekend plans?

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Beautiful beach ride with my boy ❤️ Well, until he spooked at a particularly suspicious wave, dumped me in the sea, and wouldn’t let me catch him for 10mins ? remind me why I thought taking a freshly clipped, spooky horse to the beach was a good idea?! (To be fair, other than that one incident he was pretty well behaved, so maybe I’ll forgive him for the dunking...)
 
It was lovely riding in the lanes today, I took my two ride and lead for my hours exercise (maybe a few minutes over!) it was warm, no wind and no traffic. When we got back I filmed a trec test for the online winter league/competition we are doing, small pony was nicely knackered so actually managed to do the immobility.
 
Glad to see everyone managing to enjoy themselves despite the latest lockdown restrictions, I too have still been having fun!

Originally, I was meant to be competing on Saturday. Cancelled. Obvs. Irritating.

So I schooled both the boys instead! Fig is getting better and more like his regular old self with every ride. We did our first piaffe and passage steps in almost a year and our first (intentional) tempi changes. I'm not pushing him, not asking for more than a few steps or a couple of changes. Nothing big or clever or perfect. Just letting him enjoy himself, he feels fabulous. Love him lots. Hackage for him next weekend as a treat I think!

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Rooni has stepped up the training a gear, not pushing him harder physically but working his brain a bit more! He's responded exactly as I'd hoped. I'm being vary careful not to work the same muscles groups or grind a movement. This week he's schooled 3 times (1 being a quick stretch), jumped once and hacked once. He's listening better and relaxing sooner, much more ready to work. During lockdown i'm going to do my best to polish the HP, changes and sitting trot.

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Today we had the best views, it was just lovely. 4.5 hours and 20 miles. His confidence with traffic has really come on, good job as today was mostly roadwork but I trust my company implicitly. He didn't flinch at a single vehicle (even when against the traffic in our pair) except a speeding Ocado van (doing well over 30 on a narrow village road!) but even then it was a single spin rather than bolting the opposite direction blinding.

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Massive improvement, couldn't be prouder of him!
 
Had a lovely weekend, good lesson on Saturday followed by a leisurely hack out afterwards with my friend (also instructor). We had a great time wading through pony high grass (luckily no snakes!). L met some freshly shorn alpacas for the first time, took it in her stride interestingly enough. She's a coward out at the best of times but going with the other pony gave her courage it seems! She didn't like the sheep behind the hedge though :cool:

Sunday we went out to the local equestrian arenas and really worked on maintaining a consistent outside rein contact (getting better! My Achilles heel). Ended up doing 10m canter circles and canter leg yields which was HARD, but also shows how much more reactive to my leg L is now. I've spent the last few weeks making her move OFF my leg NOW because she was quite clearly ignoring it. It's made leg yielding so much easier and we actually had crossing over at the canter yesterday. Then collapsed in a sweaty heap, but super pleased with the progress. I'm lucky to have met a lovely lady who I ride with, she is a dressage judge and instructor and is kindly giving me tips in exchange for company while riding. Super grateful.

Hope everyone else had a great weekend :)
 
nikkimariet said:
except a speeding Ocado van (doing well over 30 on a narrow village road!)
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I have bought myself an orange hi vis schooling whip and attempt to hit anything that comes close enough! Usually just the threat is enough that most slow down and allow more room. I'm going to add streamers and a light too.
We hacked, both days around the local nature reserve, yesterday at a walk as the lockdown army was out in force - what did people do before as I'm sure they weren't all out roaming pre lockdown.
Today we got up early so we could have a canter out there. Poor supercob, hes gone from yay canter to omg more canter!
Our medium trot is well and truly there now, takes a few strides to get the first then it just zings along. Coming back can be harder, he likes his new trick and I tell him hes a good boy so he just keeps offering it.
I've spent a couple of weeks chasing the left hind so now we've swapped and it's the right hes shoving out.
And we've done so much walk to canter that today when I asked from a trot he popped in to medium instead ?
 
We walked little robin and grumpy B out yesterday. Stopped a few times to graze together. No grumpy faces from B and Robin just finds everything so exciting. Life is one big adventure for him. He's a real credit to his breeder.

We finished robins stable/shelter which he was most impressed with. He can now have his dinner in the dry with out the sheep and turkey trying to steal it.
 
I had my first ride on Chilli yesterday - he's just lovely! A pleasure to tack up (other than if I need to do anything at his back end - he just wants to follow me around hence the straw in his tail ;). He's only in his stable for a week so I don't want to faff around putting a tie-up ring in there!), stood at the mounting block for me to get on, then tried really hard to work out what I was asking. He's very responsive to the leg both forwards and sideways and therefore easy to correct his baby wobbles!

We did a few minutes in the school, then went around the farm tracks with his uncle Pocholo. He led the whole way around, was easy to focus on me instead of horses in fields, cocked an ear at each of the xc jumps but no spooking. An absolute delight! I'll ride him in the big school on Wednesday, another mini-hack on Friday then I'll turn him away (as much as I'd like to keep riding him!).

Here's a video - I look huge but promise it's just because I have my back protector on and a load of stuff in my pockets underneath ?


Then I hopped on Danny and did some good work in the big school, despite him starting off tense and distracted due to horses galloping around in the field above us. Really pleased with him too. His owner and I need to start thinking about selling in the spring, I'll start another post on that as I know nothing about selling and would appreciate advice from the HHO hive mind!
 
Just hacking for us this weekend. The TPT was absolutely heaving, so we barely got out of walk, but Blue was an absolute star. She had snarling dogs lunging at her, cyclists shooting past so close I nearly kicked one, and a small child bouncing off her leg, and she just flicked her ears and plodded on.

When I was a pony-less kid, I rode any lunatic that was offered to me, and always dreamed of having a sensible, honest horse that would put up with numpties both on and around her. Blue may not be most people's dream horse, but she's definitely mine!

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Ooh which bit of the TPT are you on pippity? I think our nearest section would be stockport sort of area. It's not something I've ever really used tbh but I know some parts are lovely
 
Roxylola said:
Ooh which bit of the TPT are you on pippity? I think our nearest section would be stockport sort of area. It's not something I've ever really used tbh but I know some parts are lovely
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We use the Broadheath to Lymm sections. Sadly, the ones each side aren't open to horses, which is very limiting. It's our default hack, because we don't have much else around us that's off-road.
 
We had a definite breakthrough in our lesson last night. Basically, if I do an exercise more than three times, Blue gets bored and throws her toys out of the pram. (I know I'm anthropomorphising.) So we experimented with constantly switching things round and throwing in new exercises and really keeping her brain engaged, and it worked! I'm the kind of person who likes to do something again and again until it's perfect, and so was my old share horse, so I need to really change my attitude to keep Blue on side.
 
That's good pippity. It's so much easier when they are on board, I often play a bit at something to give the general idea then maybe leave it alone for a good while as long as we're working well in general things often improve on their own
 
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