Sunny mid March Plans???

Red-1

Red-1

I used to be decisive, now I'm not so sure...
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First time I've started one of these!

After a stressful week, where I sacked off my counsellor, I am taking BH off to Somerford for camp!

I am looking forward to horse time but have warned them I'm wanting a no stress set of lessons, where I can bask in the situation, rather than kick on and do a lot.

Even more exciting, I am leaving my boyfriend behind to look after Rigs and the two doggos. I am not sure if I'll get a photo of one or two of them taking him to the pub 🤣 but then, he seems to have some 'jobs' lined up too.

Who else is up to what?

ETA - I don't think I can get HHO on my phone, annoyingly!!!
 
Have a fabulous time at camp Red! Will look forward to your report on how it goes.

No horse plans for me today. It's house moving day! I'm dropping the dog off with my mum and then off to get keys to new place before meeting OH and the removal van.

It was my last day in my current job yesterday so I feel a bit frazzled and unsure which way is up. Hopefully things will feel more settled before my next riding lesson on Wednesday. If not I may opt for a groundwork session.
 
I'm keeping everything crossed that there are no family emergencies/ emergency situations to attend to so that I can have a nice and quiet weekend!

Main task to tackle is the start of teaching my rising 2 year old Rabbit to wear a bit and bridle - we've gone a bit backwards so I'm going to try a different approach and see if that helps him. He also needs a bloody good bath as he is supposed to be a buckskin few spot (he's an Appaloosa), but he's more like a poo stain multiple spot at the moment.....if shares in persil, daz and NAF Purple shampoo come up I'm taking them! Luckily he adores attention and being pampered so it will be a lovely chilled bath time, compared to my retired lad who detests baths and has been known to turn the yard into a swimming pool in protest.....

My retired lad Baggs is teaching the natural horsemanship ropes to a fellow livery on Sunday, and I've agreed to be chief photographer - so I suppose I'd better remove the grass stains from his ass whilst I'm cleaning up the 2 year old and have all the shampoo etc out - can't exactly have him looking feral and covered in lord knows what can I 🤣

It's a bit weird not going out riding with my friends and their horses now that the weather has hopefully turned a corner, but I've always adored the groundwork and care aspect of horses as well as the riding so it's not too much to miss. I'm hoping that Rabbit will be mature enough to back lightly and get a few rides under his hooves middle of next year when he's about 3.5 years old, but given that he's just shot up on the butt again and looks like someone was drunk when putting him together in the factory, I think it'll be closer to 4 before I lightly back and ride him away. Not an issue though as he's my horse for life so I'll happily take the slow path with him :)
 
I’m going to bring my (just) five year old back into work. She’s had a couple of months off, as she’s still immature for her age, but she’s telling me she is bored!

Dentist this morning, saddler tomorrow, farrier on Wednesday and vet physio for a massage next Saturday.

She’s full of the joys of spring, so I am sure I will need to put my brave pants on 🤡!

ETA: jealous of camp Red! Have fun.
 
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Not a lot happening here this weekend as Winston is currently in horspital having a couple of sarcoids lasered off. So a quiet weekend for him recuperating.
Managed to sneak in a lesson mid week (he was very good, just needs to learn to bend around corners!) and a lovely hack between showers with his best friend yesterday.
His field buddy leaves the yard tmw as his loan has ended. But am going to look at a potential replacement with fellow livery in the morning.
So stuff still happening, just no riding. Which is a shame as the ground is perfect at the moment.
 
The weather is pretty bleak here, so I might just do some liberty work with Amber this weekend. We've got our first show of the season next weekend, so I'll be learning patterns too. A bath/tail wash should be on the cards but I don't think we'll get the weather for it. I do need to start packing the trailer and finding out my show gear as well. I've completely failed to get the pocket put on my chinks or the rear cinch attachments changed so I shall have to live with how it all is for another year.
 
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I've now made it down to 10.5 stone so i'm getting back on board my horse after being off since Christmas. He's sharp at the best of times and I've kept him going on the long reins and lunging, so my plan is to box up, get on and just keep trotting so he doesn't buck me off. All the luck needed. :D
 
Horses make good counsellors Red! Enjoy camp.

The microcob has just been out for a 2.5 hour hack. Should have been a shorter circular route but faced with a sea of deep, wet clay we turned round - twice past the hunt kennels so I'm not popular. She's much fitter than I realised under all that hair.

I'm taking the hooligan to a riding club organised polework clinic tomorrow. The instructor knows him well and she always has good set ups so I can keep his brain occupied rather than having bored, naughty cob.

I'm not sure we've got the sunshine to start doing baths but I really need to do tail washes and get stuff on itchy feather. I want to do a couple of in hand classes with the microcob this spring and she's looking very feral!
 
I've got my usual riding lessons planned tonight (dressage) and tomorrow afternoon (jumping). Tomorrow morning I'm off to dog club, so that's my day gone.
As usual, I've got too much stuff I would like to do on Sunday: Hack out Enormosaurus, take the dogs on a long walk, groom and feet trim for the horses, make a large dent in clearing the hedges around my field so that I can get it fenced soon... but at the minute, the weather looks like it's not playing ball, with sleet announced.
Also Little Madam is hitting the 320 days of gestation tomorrow, so entering the potential foaling window (she doesn't appear ready to give birth just yet though), so excitement / nervousness starting to ramp up.
 
It’s the first event of the year for us on Sunday 🥳

Excited and nervous, my only aim is not to fall off in the SJ this year (which has happened 2 years in a row now 😂). Although the prospect of leaving the yard at 5:30am on a Sunday morning is making me reconsider whether I might prefer to take up knitting as a hobby…
 
We had a lovely hack today with some friends to a place I’ve not hacked to in years! Shadow is feeling really good, really striding out in trot and confidently going first for a lot of the ride. Unintentionally had a couple of canters (only a couple of strides) and he jumped a pothole… but considering this pony was one who would slump along in the slowest, “laziest” trot, I’m so pleased with him.

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Doesn't this weather just make you want to get on with things.

Had a really productive session with Reg yesterday. Bridle and much happier in his mouth. Lots of ground work and remembering the tools the NH guy gave us. Then like a pro standing at the mounting block while in bobbing up and down and leaning over his withers. He understands 'one more' to take a step forward when he's not quite parked properly too. Clever little ginger!

Lunging games for Ben today and a little hack up the road for Robin. Time to crack on and bring him into some proper work.
 
Had a lovely hack on Friday.

Was supposed to be working yesterday but ended up spending the day in hospital with youngest daughter. Can confirm the NHS is very broken. She had no food or drink from midnight Friday until after she came back from surgery at 5.45pm on saturday. She didn't go down for surgery until after 4pm.

In all the hours we were there not a single patient had BP tested or temperature taken. One elderly lady had fallen asleep in her chair with her head practically in her lap, not great considering she had broken ribs. No one thought it might be an idea to wake her up and get her in to bed. Did meet one absolute angel of a nurse who even offered us a sandwich for the journey home (daughter is at uni an hour and a half away).

I'm an overflowing bucket of stress this morning so may not ride, but thinking about rolling and harrowing which is an excellent stress buster!
 
Managed a lunging session with Ben- which he loves. We play using the whole field, poles, a little jump and I get a work out too. Reggie had more groundwork, standing at the mounting block and a bit of lunging with his tack on - everything dangling around etc. Robin went for a hack up the road. He loves being out and about. Had OH as a foot soldier. Saw a couple of pushbikes and no one died so that's a bonus.

Hope everyone had a great weekend.

@southerncomfort I hope the chain harrowing reduced the stress levels and daughter is OK. X
 
I've just landed from camp. It was awesome. I've paid for a photo package that will hopefully come this week.

We arrived on Friday 2pm and I went pretty much straight out on the farm ride, on our own. H was fab, we trotted and cantered pretty much all of it and popped some of the fences.

Saturday was SJ first, where there was a near miss with a rider who had an awful fall. H was then a bit cold from standing around and the round we videoed, he was off the aids. I'm happy though.

XC was again fab. He jumped the castle, 2 different heights and some related distances.

Sunday am was dressage. The trainer was excellent: I'd been afraid of going as we haven't had a flat lesson for ages as most trainers seem to want me to kick the back end and pull on the face and H has utter confusion with that. This trainer is classical rather then competitive in style. She was really what I need, sadly too far away for regular lessons.

We finished up with a second XC lesson. It was supposed to be cavaletti, but H was exhausted and I thought tired horse isn't the best for tricky footwork. There was a spare space on the baby XC group, so smaller than before, but perfect for the last day. One of the people watching took a few videos of that session. H is ace.

https://www.tiktok.com/video/7482470147848965398

ETA - the other rider who fell was stiff but OK the next day! It was actually her who came out and videoed XC.
 
I'm really proud of Enormosaurus this week.

Friday night we ran through a dressage test in semi competitive settings (after the warm up, all other horses chucked out of the area and doing a test one by one). The warm up was hairy to say the least with a baby horse feeling the spooky youthful joys of cold weather after a fake spring and a 9 year old who should know better seeing pokemon around the arena. I was riding Enormosaurus without gadgets for what I think is the first time. She has a martingale most the time and I normally use draw reins once a week in the dressage lesson to keep my (jumping!) Instructor from moaning too much. But my ancient draw reins decided to give up the ghost as I was putting them on and I thought it was a perfect excuse not to bother. I wasn't quite as confident in my life choices when two bucking and farting horses dashed past us, but Enormosaurus, though she did spin to follow their movement, kept a lid on it. For the actual test, she went through it nicely barring one buck in the canter to tell me I was asking for too much "collection" (a very grand word for whatever we were trying to achieve). I got the message and we did a long lopey canter instead, which led to slightly unstable back to trot transitions. But we did it, which is more than I could have imagined a few months ago.
Jumping lesson was trotting poles, a bounce, 5 strides to an upright and short turn marked by cones either to the left to another upright or right to an oxer. I rode Wonky Nose first, and wow, I love that horse. He is kind and easy and makes me look good. However, I was suffering from severe wardrobe malfunction, with my jodhpurs, hand me downs from my sister, badly scratching the insides of my thighs. I had to cut the second lesson on Enormosaurus short, but before that, she went over the trotting poles in a trot, did the bounce (as in didn't decide to make two jumps one), took me at a normal pace (not charging) to the upright, turned really well for her size and absolutely flew the last jumps. It may not sound like much, but she did what I asked without charging, her go to when she's not sure how to get to the other side and she's powerful, so it's worked so far, but it will limit her in the future if its her only option, or planting, which is what happens if I've messed up one too many times or her charging has gotten us in a serious pickle. I'm just so proud of her, and suppose I should be of myself as her only rider, for the progress she's made and her willingness to start listening to me. There's still a lot of work to do, but we're steadily getting there.
 
So. .. our last east anglia indoor event of the year.

We did quite well! massive rosettes and cup for being novice pony champions (the rosettes are so big they make the cup look smaller than it is!) and Rara also got a really big cup for... being my groom 🤣🤣

Pony was of course amazing. We fitted in a cones lesson the other week which definitely helped as no balls down in a really twisty course just a few time but we'd decided time was better than balls at this stage. Obstacles I'm pretty proud of 1.5s slower than rara in the short one and 4s slower in the long one. Trying to practice using the whip to turn in the obstacles but it is tricky while doing everything else you need to thing about, better the 2nd time in, I really do like the format of doing the 2 obstacles having a break and then going in, it's really good for learning and improving.

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Not a good day eventing on paper, but think it was probably a run that needed to happen before I can move on with the season. And I’ve actually come away feeling more positive.

We finished last season on a retirement for repeated runouts, and both lost a big chunk of hard earned confidence. Spent all winter earning it back in the SJ, but haven’t really done much XC (and none on grass). Even the SJ has only really come back together properly in the last 4-5wks. Almost all of the problem is in my head, proven repeatedly.

Super sweet dressage for 30.8, probably the most relaxed he’s ever been on grass but got a bit distracted trying to see the XC over the hedge. Then got carted round the SJ by a VERY jolly Pepsi who thought it was great being out at a big party again. Somehow left all the poles up and he felt super confident. 2 time faults which is bizarre, but I wasn’t the only one, not sure what lines they walked to distance it but it clearly wasn’t the ones people were riding.

XC warmup was good, I overthought the line to fence 3 (the commentators said it was “interesting” which I take to mean “extremely dodgy”) and we had a runout. Came back round but at the last minute I bottled and pulled him out. It was a fairly innocuous fence so not sure why I got so worked up about it.

Gave myself a stern talking to along the lines of “you didn’t get up at 4:30am and drive 2hrs to be eliminated at fence 3 so put some big girl pants on and actually ride your horse”. Lo and behold, we go over it and are off. Flew the rest of the course, all the bigger, more technical stuff? No problem. Finished having barely broken a sweat and very pleased with himself. Turns out we were having so much fun, I managed to miss out a fence so technical elimination. But oh well, we weren’t being placed anyway 😂

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Went to view a horse Thursday and vetting has been confirmed for this afternoon 🤞🏻

Could really do with some good news as the last few weeks have been a bit rubbish - losing Blue, Cas having his KS op and needing a lot more done than expected (6 dsp instead of the 2 we expected)…

Need to try to get the 7yo referred for a body scan as well as I’m convinced there’s something going on with him *somewhere* that hasn’t been picked up yet despite multiple work-ups.

He’s been away at last-chance boot camp with a very experienced behaviourist/trainer but I honestly think we’re coming to the end of the road and he’s going to end up being put to sleep as he’s verging on being dangerous under saddle.

Yet on the ground, he’s a completely different horse. 😕
 
Decided to go out to some stressage, first time in years! First mistake was not having a number on both sides, I didn't realise that was a new rule so automatic 2 marks knocked off 🤦‍♀️
Did an ok test I think, Buzz was a bit eyes on stalks as he's not done it for so long and he did stop to have a poo mid canter circle 😅 so we ended up completely mid of the pack 10/20 with a 63.7%. I'd definitely like to improve on that score so I will probably do another one soon. Highest score was 6*% so I'm not too bummed with my score.
I also need a new jacket as I was the only one there in tweed!
 
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